By Paul Wood, Jr.
I met Guy Hutchins, Sr. in the spring of 1973, my senior year in high school. An elderly, soft-spoken stranger smiled, introduced himself, took his instrument from its case, and took a seat in the French horn section of the Camden High concert band. Allen Raulston and I welcomed him.
Before class started that afternoon, our director, Mr. Bill Basden, approached us, spoke warmly to Mr. Hutchins, and explained to Allen and me that Mr. Hutchins would be playing horn alongside us for a few weeks. The newcomer would play with us in our spring concert and also perform with us at the new high school.
The new school was Lugoff-Elgin High School. Before school consolidation and desegregation began in 1965, Kershaw County had, using the parlance of that day, white schools, and colored schools. By 1971, when Lugoff-Elgin High School opened, all county schools were desegregated.
Like so many other communities in the South, the county responded belatedly to the 1954 United States Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. However, by the early 1970s, one could easily observe integration at Camden High in the classrooms and on the athletic fields, basketball courts, and buses.
The band room was an exception. In my four years in our band, numbering seventy or eighty members, I can recall only one black boy. He played drums. I recall two or three black girls who played wind instruments. I did not notice the discrepancy. Some years later, I learned that the then-closed Jackson High School could not afford a music program.
Lugoff-Elgin High had a fledgling program for marching and indoor concerts, but no French horns or students to play them. Mr. Hutchins, Allen, and I were to play in the high school’s first-ever concert. Over family dinner that night, I told my parents about the older man I had met. They already knew about him. They told me Guy Hutchins, Sr. had moved to Camden from Upstate New York to be near his son, Guy Hutchins, Jr. I saw the elder Guy Hutchins at church alongside his son and other family members. I was impressed with Mr. Hutchins’ expertise on the horn. Over the next few weeks, we three played in both concerts. I felt honored to play alongside the humble man who played so well. My time with him then ended.
Four years later, as I completed a bachelor’s degree at Furman University, I audited a course in Southern history. Reading a book for that class, I was startled to come across the name of Guy Hutchins, Sr. I learned that Mr. Hutchins had preceded Mr. Basden as Camden High’s band director. I also learned why he had resigned from his position.
Around the time of Brown v. Board of Education, Mr. Hutchins took his expertise in performance and directing to Mather Academy, a preparatory school for blacks located in Camden. He devoted part of his week to giving music instruction to the students. 1
Then one night in late 1956, as Mr. Hutchins returned home from Charlotte, NC, where he con-ducted the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, he became a victim of the savagery of the Ku Klux Klan. Men in hoods kidnapped him, tied him to a tree, beat him mercilessly, threatened him with a handgun and a shotgun, and said they would torch his house if he did not leave Camden.
Their atrocious message was blunt and clear: Do not promote racial harmony. Do not treat black students like white students. Do not allow them into our schools. Quit your job and leave this place.
Shock overwhelmed me as I read those sentences. I believe I wept. It stripped away innocence. I was horror stricken at what the dear old man who played in our company of young musicians when I was seventeen had endured when I was a toddler.
I knew about racism and violence in other places but was stunned by those residents of my hometown, a place I loved and considered idyllic, would treat another human being in such a way. I felt shame.
I was also furious with the assailants and the many residents who downplayed the severity of the crime. SLED, the state’s law enforcement division, took the investigation from county law enforcement and arrested six men. One of them admitted to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan. On two separate occasions, the solicitor brought the case before a Kershaw County grand jury. The body which convened in February reduced the charges to simple assault. In May the solicitor brought the original accusations before another grand jury. That body of local residents chose to drop all the charges. 2
Deeper and longer lasting than my shame and anger was my disappointment with the adults who had educated and mentored me before I departed for college. I felt disrespected. They failed to give me, or, I suppose, anyone else in my generation, an opportunity to grapple with that shameful episode. The event was something no one talked about. This is called a “conspiracy of silence.” When denial prevails, understanding, justice, and reconciliation are fanciful dreams.
I wonder how Mr. Hutchins felt about his return to South Carolina and how he regarded his assailants. I am not curious, though, about how he felt when he drove onto the campus of a desegregated Camden High School. Certainly, he was pleased.
A father killed the fatted calf when his prodigal, dishonorable son returned home. The father declined to even hear his son’s confession (Luke 15:11-32.) A banished, honorable man returned home and quietly took a seat in the horn section.
THE END
1 Accounts vary regarding what Mr. Hutchins had reputedly said or done to infuriate the assailants The best summary about their motives and the aftermath for him and South Carolina can be found in Philip G. Grose, Looking for Utopia: The Life and Times of John C. West (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2011,) 92—91.
2 A distinctly different account of one of the grand juries’ proceedings reports that the presiding judge spent an hour railing against the 1954 Brown vs. School Board Supreme Court decision. See below: “Intimidation, Reprisal and Violence in the South’s Racial Crisis.”
The Carolina Band Directors’ Association inducted Mr. Hutchins into their Hall of Fame in 1998. See https://www.bandlink.org/about/scbda-hall-of-fame/hof-class-of-1998/.
For Further Reading
Mr. Hutchins posthumously received an honorary doctorate in humanities from his alma mater in 1981. These words are found in the Commencement Program of Clemson University, 5/1/1981:
HONORARY DEGREE DOCTOR OF HUMANITIES
GUY STARR HUTCHINS, distinguished musician, pioneering music educator, and humanitarian, has devoted a lifetime to advancing the cause of music education and enjoyment. The awarding of this honorary degree is in recognition of all that his exemplary life has meant to the cultural enrichment and growth of South Carolina and the region and his tremendous influence as a true humanitarian on the lives of all who have known him. His extraordinary gifts for orchestral conducting, training orchestra and band musicians, his patience and understanding for the young, and his humanity and excellent character have influenced the making of music and musicians in South Carolina for decades….
Newspaper accounts and other historical summaries differ slightly in the assault on Mr. Hutchins. Further information can be found at:
White, John W., “Managed Compliance: White Resistance and Desegregation in South Carolina,1950-1970,” University of Florida, Ph.D. dissertation, 2006.
“Intimidation, Reprisal and Violence in the South’s Racial Crisis” found at a website of the American Friends Service Committee, https://www.crmvet.org/docs/60_src_violence-r.pdf
“The Governor’s Officers-SC’s First Organized Police.” Found at https://dc.statelibrary.sc.gov/bitstream/handle/10827/25809/Huguley_The_%20Governors%27_%20Offic-ers_2017-07-06.pdf?equence=3&isAllowed=y
“Guy Hutchins(1905-1997) Musical Mentor and Cherished Friend,” found at the blog of Tim Franklin. See https://musicandlifedotcom.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/guy-hutchins-musical-mentor-friend/
For a contemporaneous news account of the assault, see the California Digital Newspaper Collection,” Five Hooded Men Beat Man for Racial Speech” found at https://cdnc.ucr.edu.
Mr. Hutchins and his son Guy Hutchins, Jr. are buried side-by-side in the Quaker Cemetery in Camden, South Carolina.
Revised version copyright September 28, 2023