Mr. Speaker, former mayor of Charleston, J. Palmer Gaillard, Jr., died July 28, 2006, leaving a legacy of public service that will always be cherished. He served as mayor of South Carolina's most historic city from 1959 to 1975. He was…
Mr. Speaker, former mayor of Charleston, J. Palmer Gaillard, Jr., died July 28, 2006, leaving a legacy of public service that will always be cherished. He served as mayor of South Carolina's most historic city from 1959 to 1975.
He was married to the former Lucy Foster Gaillard of Charleston for 57 years, who preceded him in death on October 6, 2001. Surviving are three sons, J Palmer Gaillard III and his wife Henrietta Freedman Gaillard, W. Foster Gaillard and his wife Susan Street Gaillard, and Thomas H. Gaillard, all of Charleston, SC; 5 grandchildren, John P. Gaillard IV, M.D. and his wife Lori, Emmie Gaillard Hershey and her husband Clay, Mary Loize Gaillard, Susan Huguenin Gaillard and W. Foster Gaillard, Jr.; and 3 great grandchildren, Clay W. Hershey, Jr., Thomas Gaillard Hershey, and Alston M. Gaillard.
The following op-ed was published in tribute in The Post and Courier, August 3, 2006. The author is prominent Charleston attorney and author, Robert N. Rosen. We share the same experience in that Mayor Gaillard's race was my first participation in politics at the behest of my mother, Wray G. Wilson, who had me deliver precinct voter call lists on election day for the mayor when I was 12 years old.
``We Need a Change'': J. Palmer Gaillard's Legacy for Charleston
(By Robert Rosen)
My earliest recollection of participating in politics is
the Gaillard-Morrison race for mayor of Charleston. I was 12
years old. At the behest of my father, Morris D. Rosen, I
handed out a piece of paper (it would be an exaggeration to
call it ``campaign literature'') called a ``ticket'' with a
big headline that read ``We Need a Change'' and a picture of
the ballot led by the young, dynamic reform candidate, J.
Palmer Gaillard, Jr. It was 1959. Gaillard campaigned, like
all opponents of incumbents, for ``change.''
After his election, Gaillard, as mayor, was a blend of
hard-headed, no-nonsense conservatism (he was a notorious
penny-pincher when it came to the city budget) and flexible
pragmatism. He realized in the early 1960s that the old
peninsula city of Charleston which ended at Mount Pleasant
Street and the edges of the Ashley and Cooper rivers could
not remain economically viable, and he aggressively pursued
annexation of the West Ashley district to the city.
Mayor Gaillard made many other important contributions to
the city of Charleston, but none compare to his leadership in
the transition from an era of segregation and Jim Crow to
integration and racial equality.
When he became mayor, Charleston was a segregated city with
all that implies--segregated restaurants, schools, buses and
public restrooms. Gaillard's views on the issues were
conventional. Segregation was then the Southern way of life.
He reflected the opinions and beliefs of his friends,
neighbors and supporters.
But when the Civil Rights movement came to Charleston in
the 1960s--the sit-down movement at King Street lunch
counters, Civil Rights marches, demonstrations (peaceful and
not so peaceful), and the Medical University Hospital
strike--Palmer Gaillard guided the city through various
crises over 15 years with a steady and fair hand.
He believed, first and foremost, in the rule of law. He did
not wink at violence or intimidation. When told that the
federal courts would order the integration of city
facilities--the first municipal facilities in South
Carolina--the only question he asked his lawyers (among them,
my father) was, ``What is the law?'' He immediately
instructed his lawyers to obey the law, which meant
acquiescence in integration, something the majority of white
Charlestonians adamantly opposed.
``The Charleston hospital strike of 1969 made national
headlines. Black hospital workers marched and agitated to
protest racial discrimination and poor working conditions at
the Medical University. Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young and
Ralph Abernathy all came to Charleston. The National Guard
was called out to maintain the peace. ``The strike of
hospital workers in Charleston, S.C., has become the
country's tensest civil rights struggle,'' The New York Times
editorialized in the first of three editorials on the
subject. Ralph Abernathy later wrote of his stay in the
Charleston jails, ``I remembered the Birmingham jail and
considered myself fortunate.''
Palmer Gaillard and his Police Chief John Conroy (dubbed
``Mr. Cool'' by the local press) kept the peace and allowed
the protestors to protest, which was their right. The crisis
passed. The strike was resolved. The peace was preserved. No
one was killed. No Southern demagogues stood in doorways or
made fools of themselves on national television like George
Wallace in Alabama or Lester Maddox in Georgia.
Gaillard was the quintessential Charleston conservative.
But he was a leader. He appointed Richard E. Fields the first
black judge in South Carolina since Reconstruction to the
Charleston Municipal Court. On Palmer Gaillard's watch,
segregation peacefully gave way to integration in the most
Southern of cities, where both secession and the Civil War
began.
When Palmer Gaillard campaigned on the theme ``We Need a
Change,'' he certainly did not mean a revolution in Southern
racial mores, laws and customs. But those who correctly
demanded change found in him the right man to preside over
that historic change: an honest, forthright, law abiding,
hard-headed Huguenot, and one of the great mayors of the city
of Charleston.