How an area became a city

Surrounded by memorabilia of his political heyday in his Park Circle home, John Bourne points to a photo of himself being sworn in as North Charleston's first mayor by then-Gov. John West.

"That was one of the best days of my life," the man who founded the city said.

Getting to that best day was not easy though, and Bourne, now 80, still remembers details of how the area became a city in 1972.

It took four tries and a Supreme Court decision, but Bourne pulled it off when others had failed.

How did he do it?

Bourne had watched efforts in the 1960s to incorporate the area that is now North Charleston into a city, and thought it was impossible under the laws at the time.

In late 1970, he and attorney Jim Gonzales, who had been involved in a previous startup effort, began talking about it.

"It became very obvious to me and to him that what they were trying to do was mission impossible," Bourne said. "They had made some grievous errors. We asked ourselves, 'What is possible?' "

Previously, organizers had decided who they wanted to be mayor and city council members, what the budget would be and what salaries would be set for council members before they put the issue up for a vote, Bourne said.

"The people were powerless," he said. "We reassured everyone that you ought to get as many people to run as you can. The more you run, the more credibility you have and the more people would turn out to vote."

Bourne and Gonzales decided to narrow the city's initial limits to the area with the strongest interest in the incorporation effort: the area around Park Circle, bounded by Interstate 26 on the west, the Cooper River on the east, Berkeley County and Remount Road to the north and the railroad along Bexley Avenue to the south.

"Getting the vote out was the No. 1 thing," Bourne said.

The biggest obstacle was the so-called super majority rule and how to overcome it.

The courts had long ruled that the voting rolls constituted the electorate. "If your name was on a roll, you had to be considered," Bourne said. "The end result was that if you moved to Arizona, died or stayed home and didn't vote and your name was still on the roll, your vote counted as a no vote."

That as much as anything else killed previous incorporation efforts.

Bourne and Gonzales went to Columbia with their wives and went through the voter registration rolls to see who voted and where they were. They sent out a blind mailing to the voters listed in the four affected precincts. He doesn't remember what it said, except for what was printed on the front of it: Do not forward. Return to sender.

"We wanted to know who was where," Bourne said. "If one came back, we tucked it away." The move later proved invaluable.

Next they rented a building on Montague Avenue, installed about 25 telephones and got volunteers to call and call and call to generate more public interest in the vote.

"We campaigned on the right of self-determination," Bourne said.

Sixteen people ran for six council seats, and two people ran for mayor.

On the night of the election, April 21, 1971, they struck off those who they didn't believe should be on the rolls.

"When we did that, we met the super majority that a majority of those qualified to vote must vote in the affirmative," Bourne said.

A group of citizens filed suit, challenging the results in Charleston County Court.

Bourne and those who filed suit lost because the judge supported the old law.

"It was an old and cherished tradition to vote by tombstones in Charleston County," Bourne said. "We were challenging the power base."

They appealed to the state Supreme Court.

"Knowing what we were facing, we hired notary publics to go to houses where the envelopes came back and ask people if they were Mr. Jones, for instance. They would say 'Mr. Jones doesn't live here.' "

They presented that information to the court, and on June 2, 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Bourne and company's favor.

"I was out in the field selling real estate," Bourne remembers. "Gonzales called me and told me the other side had 10 days to appeal. That was among the biggest things that had ever happened to me in my life."

The next day the attorney for the other side called to say they would not file an appeal. They still had to wait out the 10 days, since the other side could change its mind.

"We had 10 days to get ready," Bourne said. "We called the town of Mount Pleasant and got their code of laws and we copied them."

Bourne, Gonzales and their families rented a house at Garden City Beach.

"While they were on the beach, we were in the house, cutting and pasting the codes for the basic setup of government, much of which is still on the books," Bourne said. "We had to act fast because July 1 was the beginning of the fiscal year."

"We went to Columbia on a Monday and met with the attorney general and received our charter. We went across the street to the Statehouse and met with Governor West and were sworn in," Bourne said. That was June 12, 1972.

The council first met the next Thursday night. "We organized the council, we adopted the ordinances, we levied a tax and we set a budget. We borrowed $25,000 from First National Bank, leased a building that is now a glass shop on East Montague Avenue and started being a city."

Reach Warren Wise at 745-5850 or wwise@postandcourier.com.