SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICAL COLLECTIONS ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Interview with Rembert Coney Dennis (1915-1992) South Carolina Political Collections Oral History Project Rembert C. Dennis Interview - 2 [TAPE TWELVE BEGINS] ROSENGARTEN: Senator, our last conversation, I think we talked for a little while after the tape about, you had the notion of someday uniting the school populations of Cainhoy and Hanahan? Would you just describe that idea again for the tape because I don't think I got it on the last one. DENNIS: I said I might do what about them? ROSENGARTEN: You said that you could foresee a day when the school populations of Berkeley and Charleston counties were connected by that bridge. DENNIS: Oh yes. That's been a prediction of the people who study populations. That came up when we were in the process of school integration. The question specifically was about the Hanahan situation -- cut off from Berkeley County by the river. What we were going to do to take care of that population down there when we didn't have the means to take care of what we were assigned to at that time, when we were in court. What we suggested was that there would be a merger, there'd be a time to come not far down the road when the Berkeley county schools and Cainhoy and Wando would have to integrate with the North Charleston area schools because they'd be connected by the bridges over, in order to make it much closer together than they are now. I think that day is coming. ROSENGARTEN: Would you foresee opposition to that idea? DENNIS: Not any more than the usual opposition to merging two counties. I think it would have some advantages for Berkeley county rural schools. They'd be connected with more city-wide type schools. The objections would come from them rather than from us. But I think that's in the future. I won't have to handle it, but it's coming, I'm sure. ROSENGARTEN: Back in the early seventies, you strongly advocated reinstating the death penalty and even suggestion televising executions. What was your reasoning in this, and what did your opponents say? DENNIS: Of course I was personally influenced I'm sure by the tragedy that I was aware of, in my own family, my father being killed. I maintained then, and still do, a rather tough stance on prosecution in murder cases, high-crime cases. I had been doing some reading and come to some ideas that perhaps I had as strong a case you could for that. A penalty rather, in a case, how strong a penalty would be for the future murderers if some were around to see the execution. There are instances of where that's done. Executions used to be witnessed by a lot of people when they had them outside on the cross and so forth. Most anybody who wanted to see one, I just suggested it, sympathy for it. I went to one. ROSENGARTEN: You have been to one? DENNIS: Yes. I went to the one that involved the defendant who killed a storekeeper at Cainhoy. I didn't plan it a long time. I was riding to Columbia to the legislature, at that time I was a member of the house, and I was riding with the senator and other representatives. I learned that on that Tuesday morning we were going up, they were going a little early for the execution of this fellow who killed .... at the store at Cainhoy. They asked me if I wanted to go and I accepted. It wasn't pleasant to see. ROSENGARTEN: Was that a hanging? DENNIS: The electric chair. The executioner asked him a few questions and then they put the pail on his head. His arms and legs were already strapped. The executioner tapped the cane three times and you could see him pull the switch. The charge hit the poor fellow, and it didn't take long. South Carolina Political Collections Oral History Project Rembert C. Dennis Interview - 3 ROSENGARTEN: In the case of your father's murder, as I remember your describing it to me, the man who actually pulled the trigger you didn't really hold morally responsible because he had been put up to it. DENNIS: That's right. I'd have to hold him morally responsible, but he was just barely legally responsible because he didn't have it up here. ROSENGARTEN: What would you think could be done in a case like that? DENNIS: Well I guess the jury system is about the best way for it to be handled. He was tried and found guilty by a jury in another county. There was a change of venue to Orangeburg County. I don't have any suggestions for improvement in the way the trial is handled. I was merely suggesting perhaps some edification could come out of allowing people to see it. Especially those that were likely to be put in a position where they'd want to do it themselves. ROSENGARTEN: But if you, if the men who were behind your father's assassination could have been brought to justice, the men who had put this guy up to it, they couldn't have been charged with murder. They would have been charged with conspiracy or accessory or something. DENNIS: Same penalty though. ROSENGARTEN: Same penalty? DENNIS: If you arranged the gun and equipment and everything for a fellow to go kill somebody, you're equally responsible with him. You're charged with a conspiracy to murder, and that's what several of them were charged with. ROSENGARTEN: So there were, some of these men were charged? I didn't realize that. What was the outcome? DENNIS: Found not guilty. By the judge, not by the jury. There was a big newspaper exploration of the whole thing, whether or not the judge had been bought off by the defense. Horrible situation. Suspicion developed strongly that he was. Under the influence of alcohol, he made some statements later to people that in the case he may have been approached. At this time I wouldn't like to revive the details of it. I'll tell you, but I wouldn't want there to be a spokesman for a printed passage saying that Judge Grimball from Charleston was the judge, but he was. ROSENGARTEN: But there was no legal recourse? You couldn't have a mistrial declared, or... DENNIS: No. No way to declare the trial a mistrial. ROSENGARTEN: Must have been very frustrating. DENNIS: It was very aggravating. ROSENGARTEN: You know, for someone who's spent his whole life writing laws and upholding the justice of the state, to see a situation where you know justice is not being done, but there's nothing you can do about it. DENNIS: That's right. That's the way it happened. ROSENGARTEN: Going back to the seventies now. In 1973, rumors of the utility companies purchasing the Santee-Cooper co-op created a fair amount of political flak. Do you remember what the issues were here? South Carolina Political Collections Oral History Project Rembert C. Dennis Interview - 4 DENNIS: The Santee-Cooper was getting into the retail electrical business to some extent, and they were furnishing the electricity for a big area of the co-ops. The legislature was confronted with questions about an introduction of legislation to investigate what all the circumstances were. Santee-Cooper was actually investigated. The upshot of it was that there wasn't anything to legally prosecute anybody about. Turned out to be a regulatory matter, and special legislation was passed for Santee-Cooper to operate an electrical system for residences as well as for big business. It had been a constant tug-of-war between Santee-Cooper and the private power companies. How far should public power be allowed to go to serve industry, and to some extent to serve dwellings? Santee-Cooper was created to do things other than to furnish electricity for household and business purposes. But of course when the law had been opened up for it, they wanted to get in it, and they did get in it to some extent. The Public Service Commission had no jurisdiction over Santee-Cooper, a state agency, and that's where the real problems came. It was a problem for the legislature to act rather than a regulatory body. The parties got together and agreed on legislation. Legislation that set up regulations for that operation of a state agency selling public power to industry and to home-owners. Friction occurred in the legislation and the operation of it. The battle between public power and private power developed this pretty well. You don't see much of it anymore. There's room in the marketplace for both. ROSENGARTEN: The first Hell-Hole Swamp festival took place in 1972. The program that was published was dedicated to the memory of L. Mendel Rivers, who had died the year before I believe. Were you there? Can you remember these early festivals? DENNIS: Oh yes. I went to all of them. ROSENGARTEN: You went to all of them? What do you remember best about them? This one I think was the second one, because it's 1973. There weren't any pictures of that first one, but I thought this was amusing. There is a picture of your family there. DENNIS: I think the headline's very appropriate. ROSENGARTEN: What does it say? DENNIS: "Festival offers something for everyone." Rivers had died then, and Mendel Davis was the congressman.