Staff reports (updated 10/2/15, with audio) | The federal courthouse annex in Charleston was renamed today for the courageous federal judge who masterminded the nation’s shift from segregated schools in a key judicial opinion from 1951.
But the real story behind the renaming of the annex as the J. Waties Waring Judicial Center is about the guy who is asked for the change — former U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings, for whom the annex was named when it was built in the 1980s.
U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., today said Hollings was the first person in American history to ask for his name to be removed from a federal building to honor someone else.
The story goes that folks in Washington surprised Hollings years back by naming the courthouse after him. Hollings, who then sat on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee that funded the judiciary, got the money to expand the courthouse. But his colleague, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond reportedly quietly arranged to put Hollings’ name on the annex.
Hollings appreciated the gesture, but never really wanted his name on the courthouse. He thought the building should be named for Waring, whose courage changed history with his dissenting opinion in Briggs v. Elliott. In the opinion on that South Carolina school segregation case, Waring wrote that the “separate but equal” standard in schools was unconstitutional. The Briggs case later became consolidated into the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Learn more here.
“The request to rename the center came as a personal request from Senator Hollings, and I think it speaks volumes about his character and leadership,” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said earlier this year.
A few weeks ago, Congress passed legislation to rename the annex. It then was signed by President Obama.
In April 2014, a statue of Waring was unveiled on the annex grounds. At today’s ceremony, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley announced that there’s an effort underway to erect a statue of Hollings on the grounds of the courthouse annex.
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