JEAN HOEFER TOAL
(1943-Present)
Courtesy of Columbia City of Women. https://www.columbiacityofwomen.com/honorees/jean-hoefer-toal
Meet Jean
Jean Hoefer Toal was born on August 11, 1943 in Columbia as the daughter of Herbert W. Hoefer and Lilla Ferrell. She got a philosophy degree from Agnes Scott College in 1965 and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Judicial Council National Supervisory Board of the United States National Student Association. She then earned her JD at the University of South Carolina, where she served as editor for South Carolina Law Review, and earned her JD, becoming the 90th woman admitted to the South Carolina bar on October 3, 1968. She worked at the Haynsworth firm of Greenville and became the first woman associated there. She was elected as a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives for Richland County in 1975 and served for 13 years.
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On March 16, 1988, she became the first female
justice, first Roman Catholic justice, and first native of Columbia to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina. In 1995, she was awarded the South Carolina Trial Lawyers Outstanding Contribution to Justice Award and obtained several honorary degrees from the University of South Carolina, Francis Marion University, Citadel, Columbia College, and College of Charleston. On March 23, 2000, she became the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina and is currently the longest serving Chief Justice at 15 years.
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In 2000, she came up with the idea of automating records through the internet instead of using a mainframe computer to make the court system and government records more accessible to people who live in small and rural areas. She successfully got funding and approval for this project by arguing efficient judiciary is essential to getting businesses to come to South Carolina to Senator Fritz Hollings. During her time on the Supreme Court, she also led the court opinions to reduce the addictive gambling scourge of video poker.
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Courtesy of The Columbia Star.
In 2014, near the end of her term, Associate Justice Costa Pleicones announced he was going to run for the Chief Justice seat, and she decided to run against him instead of retiring as she was initially planning, making that the first time a sitting Chief Justice was challenged in 100 years. She won that election and continued serving as Chief Justice until she reached the mandatory retirement age of 72. She is currently in charge of the asbestos trials and continues to be a pioneer for women in law.
Jean Hoefer Toal's South Carolina
In 1917, the NAACP was established in Columbia and Charleston; however, they didn’t organize larger campaigns until 1939, making them relatively inefficient. In 1941, John Henry McCray founded Lighthouse and Informer, which became a vital source of political activism for blacks. The decision of Smith v. Allwright (1944) ended the white primary in the South by expanding black voting power, Elmore v. Rice (1947) guaranteed the right of South Carolina’s African Americans to participate in the state’s Democratic primary. While there were whites who were disconcerted about the increasing liberties blacks were getting, Governor Ernest “Fritz” Hollings was firm that South Carolina was “a government of laws rather than a government of men”, influencing blacks in South Carolina to primarily gain their rights through legal approaches rather than street demonstrations. This led to the University of South Carolina and Clemson University desegregating in 1963, nine years after Brown v. Board of Education.
However, despite attempts to take a mostly legal approach, South Carolina was not free from bloody protests. After the passage of the Public Accommodations Act of 1964, All Star Bowling Lanes and Orangeburg Regional Hospital were the only public places in Orangeburg that weren’t integrated by February 1968. Students from South Carolina State and Claflin Colleges attempted to make a deal with the manager of All Star Bowling Lanes, Harry Floyd, but he refused to integrate, claiming that his establishment did not count as a place of public accommodations. The students staged sit-in protests with the intention to get arrested to take the issue to court.
However, on February 8th, South Carolina State College was put on lockdown, so students protested at the front of campus. During the protest, a bannister hit patrolman David Shealy on the head around 10:30 pm, causing nine patrolmen to fire on the students, resulting in the deaths of Samuel Hammond, Henry Smith, and Delano Middleton and injuring at least 28 students. Governor Robert McNair claimed the students fired first and used Cleveland Sellers, a prominent member of the Black Power movement who was planning on helping the students organize and protest, as a scapegoat for the Orangeburg Massacre; all the officers involved were exonerated of all charges.
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Pictured left to right are Delano Middleton, Samuel Hammond, Jr, and Henry Smith. Courtesy of Sciway. https://www.sciway.net/afam/orangeburg-massacre.html
These events during the Civil Rights Movement also contributed to the shifting political policies of the South. Storm Thurmond, former governor of South Carolina, was the first prominent southern politician to switch from the Democratic party to Republican party and pushed conservatives to support Nixon instead of Reagan, which was instrumental to the formation of a new conservative coalition that replaced the Dixiecrats in the late 1960s.
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As photos from the Vietnam War were released to the public, protests against the war started, primarily by students and faculty at universities who gained the attention of the media and public at large. One such protest occurred at UofSC in May 1970 though it was not primarily about the war itself since UofSC was one of the largest party schools in the south in the late 1960s, and most students were more concerned with social events than politics and world events and unwilling to challenge their beliefs, making them apolitical.
While there were several student organizations that did protest against the war, such as the Student Mobilization Committee (SMC), South Carolina Revolutionary Youth Movement (SCRYM), and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the most prominent one was AWARE, who worked closely with a nearby establishment called UFO Coffeehouse to promote awareness of the war. These organizations were all labelled as “communist in nature” by the Committee to Investigate Communist Activities in South Carolina with recommendations to be “quickly and harshly dealt with”. UofSC enforced policies to limit their activities, such as stricter curfew and not allowing unapproved guest speakers; however, while this successfully got AWARE suspended February 1970 for inviting several outsiders on campus and “soliciting money with university permission”, it angered the general student population.
On January 13, 1970, John Foard successfully led a campaign to shut down UFO Coffeehouse, and its five owners were arrested since their establishment was a “disorderly, ill governed place … [with] rowdy persons of evil name, fame, and conversation … [and that the] persons [charged] did possess, sell, or use unlawful drugs.” This prompted counterculture activists to form a group called UFO in Exile that frequently met at Russell House, but after the owners were found guilty under the charge of their establishment being a public nuisance on April 27, 1970, UofSC banned all unapproved nonstudents from campus to further limit their actions.
This caused the Student Emergency Coalition for Academic Freedom to form in response to the continued repression of student academic freedom, and on May 5, a Strike Committee planned a strike on classes on May 7 and 8. While class attendance was relatively normal, students rallied on the Horseshoe on the 7th before staging a peaceful sit-in in front of the information desk at Russell House. After the student government withdrew their support of the supposed takeover of Russell House by protestors, only 41 students remained within the building and were arrested in front of several protestors and curious students who gathered outside of the building. On May 11, the board of trustees of UofSC met to discuss disciplinary actions for the arrested students, but demonstrators assembled in front of the building the hearing was at with a list of demands that were rejected then staged a peaceful sit-in on the first floor. The governor declared a state of emergency after the national guard failed to subdue the crowd who eventually started rioting, and UofSC had professors meet with students to discuss concerns. This led to the removal of police at Russell House, and the state of emergency was declared over on May 19. All other protests regarding the war after May 1970 were not impactful or significant.
James Margrave Perry
Courtesy of Appalachian History.
https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2014/03/miss-jim-blazed-new-trail-women-upstate-sc.html
James Margrave Perry was born as the third daughter of James Margrave Perry and Jeanne Le Gal on May 10, 1894 in Greenville. She got a BA at the Greenville Female College in 1913 and won a scholarship medal for the highest grades. She then obtained a second BA at the University of California at Berkeley in 1915 and continued her studies there to obtain a JD in 1917. Despite being automatically admitted into the California Bar through graduation, she chose to return to South Carolina and became the first woman admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1918, three months after Governor Richard I. Manning signed legislation allowing women on the Bar.
As the first female attorney, she worked at Haynsworth and Haynsworth, primarily doing legal research and briefing until women working became more socially acceptable, and she was allowed to work on cases, specializing in corporation finance and organization and federal tax law. She was also highly involved in promoting social justice, acting as one of the founding members of the Greenville County Library and serving as a member of Kappa Beta Pi, Greenville Business and Professional Woman’s Club,
League of Women Voters, Democratic Party, Girl Scouts, and Hopewell Tuberculosis Association.
She became the first female partner in a South Carolina law firm in 1937 and created the Greenville branch of the South Carolina Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, serving as president and treasurer. She continued her humanitarian work as the director of the American Humane Society. In 1955, she was awarded the Mary Mildred Sullivan Award from Furman University and served as president of the Greenville Bar Association, becoming the first woman to chair a local bar association. She became part of a committee to draft national marriage and divorce laws and served as vice president of the Greenville Democratic Party and National Association of Women Lawyers for one term. In 1961, she was named Professional Woman of the Year and died in Greenville on April 19, 1964.
Eslinger v. Thomas
Pictured is Victoria L. Eslinger. Courtesy of Columbia City of Women. https://www.columbiacityofwomen.com/honorees/victoria-l-eslinger
Victoria Lamonte Eslinger had been recommended as a Page for the South Carolina Senate by Senator Walter J. Bristow, Jr. on November 18, 1970; however, she was rejected and explicitly told by Lovick Oliphant Thomas it was due to her sex. She attempted to appeal to Lieutenant Governor and Governor for South Carolina, but they rejected her appeal even after Bristow, Jr. helped. He then withdrew his appeal after Thomas made it clear that she would not be hired because of her sex.
On February, 1971, she filed a case against the officers and members of the Senate of South Carolina under the due process clause of 14th amendment and Title 42, Section 1983 and Section 1988 with the claim that denying her a position due to her sex was
an infringement on her constitutional rights. While she did not initially file for monetary damages, she amended her complaint on February 25, 1971 with the claim that she loss $40.00/week of wages because of the discrimination.
During the preliminary injunction, the senate offered three defenses: other applicants were more highly recommended than her, hiring only male pages is reasonable, and she did not attempt to petition the legislature prior to suing. The court, which was mainly concerned about the second point, determined that there was no infringement on her constitutional right since there are real biological differences, several existing laws that discriminate according to sex, and being a Senate Page is not a “fundamental right”, and her motion was denied.
Before the circuit court examined her case, on June 2, 1971, the South Carolina Senate adopted Resolution S.525, which established specific part-time employee classifications and duties. It explicitly stated that females could only be employed as “clerical assistants” and “committee attendants”; however, all part-time employees were still called “Pages” by the senators, and the only difference those positions had from others was that they were explicitly not allowed to run personal errands for Senators. Despite that, Eslinger decided not to apply for any of those positions, instead choosing to argue in court that S.525 discriminates against females, and she has a right to be a Senate Page.
The district court decided that Thomas was not immune from the case due to decisions from Dombrowski v. Eastland, Kilbourn v. Thompson, and Powell v. McCormack. Earle Elias Morris, Jr., Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina and President ex-officio of the Senate of South Carolina; Edgar Allan Brown, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate; and all other senators had been immune under Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the US Constitution.
The two main questions the district court answered: was denying her the position a violation of her constitutional rights and did S. 515 violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment? They concluded that while her “Constitutional right to seek employment and be employed” was violated, the rights of female citizens wasn’t because of the superseding provisions of S. 525, and there are real biological differences between females and males that justify the classification.
While Thomas wasn’t immune from the case, the court declared him immune from damages since he was a legislative employee who was acting in good faith by following South Carolina Senate policies*, and he had been sued as a Clerk of the Senate and not as an individual. As such, she got no monetary damages from this case.
*Tenney v. Brandhove declared that state legislators are included in protections under Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the US Constitution; Gravel v. United States and Kirstein v. Rector and Visitors of University of Virginia declared that state legislatures were immune from damages if they were acting in good faith.
In The Stacks
Appellate Practice in South Carolina by Jean Hoefer Toal, Amelia Waring Walker, and Margaret E. Baker
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Madam Chief Justice: Jean Hoefer Toal of South Carolina by W. Lewis Burke Jr. And Joan P. Assey
References
Bainbridge, Judith T. Attorneys & Law in Greenville County: A History. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing Incorporated, 2015.
Burton, Orville Vernon.“Civil Rights Movement.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, January 22, 2019. Accessed March 28, 2021, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/civil-rights-movement/.
Cupp, Ruth W. “Toal, Jean Hoefer.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, June 29, 2016. Accessed March 28, 2021, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/toal-jean-hoefer/.
Eslinger v. Thomas, 324 F. Supp. 1329 (D.S.C. 1971). https://casetext.com/case/eslinger-v-thomas.
Eslinger v. Thomas, 340 F. Supp. 886 (D.S.C. 1972). https://casetext.com/case/eslinger-v-thomas-3
Eslinger v. Thomas, 476 F.2d 225 (4th Cir. 1973). https://casetext.com/case/eslinger-v-thomas-2.
Greene, Robert. “South Carolina and the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement.” Patterns of Prejudice 49:5 (2015):486–501. doi:10.1080/0031322x.2015.1103445
Grose, Andrew. “Voices of Southern Protest during the Vietnam War Era: The University of South Carolina as a Case Study.” Peace & Change 32:2 (March 2007): 153-167. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0130.2007.00424.x.
Monk, John. “‘Force of nature,’ SC Supreme Court chief Jean Toal strode through history.” The State, December 5, 2015. Accessed March 30, 2021, https://www.thestate.com/news/local/article48242630.html.
Shuler, Jack. “The Orangeburg Massacre.” LDHI. Accessed March 30, 2021, https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/orangeburg-massacre/oburg-massacre-page.
Toal, Jean Hoefer. “South Carolina Chief Justice (Ret.) Jean Hoefer Toal | Women Vision SC.“ KnowItAll. Accessed March 30, 2021, https://www.knowitall.org/video/south-carolina-chief-justice-ret-jean-hoefer-toal-women-vision-sc.