The Wayward Judge Waring: Civil Rights Hero

The Charleston African American Preservation Alliance has selected a list of sites worthy of Historic Markers to commemorate Civil Rights Era Sites. Please join them in protecting the history of Charleston; Vote here for sites to receive Historic Markers.  

This following is the story of one of Charleston's most infamous civil rights figures, Judge Waties Waring.

On February 12, 1950, the South Carolina House of Representatives introduced a resolution to appropriate funds to purchase one-way tickets for Judge Waring and his wife, Elizabeth, to “any place they desired provided that they never return to the state.” 

Judge Waties Waring

When J. Waties Waring, a federal judge with strong ties to secessionist politics, met Detroit native Elizabeth Avery Hoffman in 1943, it was unthinkable that they would fall in love, divorce their spouses, and eventually help pave the way for America’s civil rights movement. It was also unthinkable that it would take place in Charleston, the shining jewel of the old South.  

But the couple did just that, relinquishing social standing and personal safety for the advancement of racial equality.

In 1945, federal judge Julius Waties Waring was enjoying the privileges that his legal career and his birthright as an eighth-generation Charlestonian afforded. He and his wife of 32 years, Annie Gammell, lived as part of Charleston's high society at their 61 Meeting Street house, and their life was the picture of propriety and decorum—at least to the public.

61 Meeting Street, home of Judge Waring

One evening in February, Waties came home and told Annie that he had fallen in love with another woman. She was Elizabeth Avery Hoffman, whom the Warings had met two years prior when Elizabeth and her husband, a Connecticut textile magnate, began wintering in Charleston. Cocktail parties and bridge games evolved into more clandestine meetings between Waties and Elizabeth, leading to a decision that would astonish Charleston. Waties asked Annie to move to Jacksonville, establish residency there, and grant him a divorce, as South Carolina did not allow the legal dissolution of marriage. Annie agreed, and soon thereafter Waties and Elizabeth were married.

The judge’s career suddenly veered dramatically to the left and most attributed the change to Elizabeth. Born into a wealthy, liberal family, she had always been a progressive on race issues. Elizabeth urged her husband to be more conscious of his power and influence and to look at issues of race with more scrutiny and compassion.

During this time, Judge Waring made some bold legal moves. He ended the segregated seating of jurors in his courtroom, and in October 1948, appointed John Fleming, a black man, as his bailiff. On July 12, 1947,  Waring presided over the federal court of the Eastern District of South Carolina in the case of Elmore v. Rice. The plaintiff, George Elmore, a black man, had not been permitted to vote in the Democratic primary, so he sued for the right. Judge Waring decided for Elmore. In his decision Waring stated: 

“private clubs  . . . do not vote and elect a president. It is time for South Carolina to rejoin the Union.  . [And] adopt the American way of conducting elections.”

George Elmore marker, Columbia, SC

His most dramatic ruling was the 1951 Briggs v. Elliot case, for which he declared the Clarendon County (SC) school board’s “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional, laying the groundwork for the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision.

Due to the outrage of that decision the Judge was forced to resign his membership from the South Carolina Society and the Hibernian Society, two of Charleston's oldest, most prestigious and all white private social clubs. 

S.C. Society Hall, Meeting Street, Charleston.

Shunned by white society as pariahs, the Warings invited black activists Septima Clark and Ruby Cornwell, into their home—and paid a costly price. Someone burned a cross on their lawn; abusive mail spilled from the letter box; telephone calls began and ended with slurs and condemnations. Through all of this, Elizabeth stood by her husband steadfastly. “I’m with you, start to finish,” she told him, urging him not to back away from controversial cases or unpopular decisions. She bore the brunt of the community’s scorn. It was Elizabeth—aka “the Witch of Meeting Street”—wagging tongues declaimed, who had wrecked a marriage and ruined Charleston with her destructive politics.

On Sunday, February 11, 1950, Elizabeth appeared on NBC's “Meet The Press” and complained that while other states had made progress in race relations, South Carolina remained “an exact replica of Russia.” She also called for intermarriage between whites and blacks.

The following Monday, the South Carolina House of Representatives introduced a resolution to appropriate funds to purchase one-way tickets for the judge and Elizabeth to ”any place they desired provided that they never return to the state.” The resolution was passed and sent to the state Senate. Judge Waring was in New York at the time and during a speech to a church group he stated: 

“We don't have a Negro problem in the South; we have a white problem. The white men . . . are obsessed with white supremacy. We do not live in the darkest Africa, we live in the darkest South Carolina.” 

When Waties retired in 1952, the couple moved to New York. “We were happy, the two of us,” he explained, but “you hate to be in a foreign land where you’re hated all the time, and that’s the way we felt we were.” From their apartment on Fifth Avenue, the Warings remained active in civil rights causes and stayed connected to political news in Charleston through their friends Cornwell and Clark.

Waties died in January 1968, Elizabeth following him just nine months later. Both were buried in Magnolia Cemetery, but not in the Waring family plot. Charles Kuralt of CBS News covered the burial and reported that “there are few white mourners here today.” Out of more than 200 people who attended the burial, less than a dozen were white. After his death, his daughter planted a magnolia sapling by his grave, but vandals uprooted the tree and cast it aside. Only nine people attended Elizabeth’s service.

Waties Waring headstone, Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston