According to the 1905 Baird's,
available through Googlebooks, South Carolina passed anti-fraternity legislation in the late 1800s. This anti-fraternity legislation prohibited national fraternities from operating in the state. Other references to this law can be found elsewhere on the web, and Baird's specifically says that the Erskine chapters of Sigma Chi and SAE, as well as other SC chapters of these two fraternities, were closed as a result of the law.
According to
the webpage of the Gamma Triton Chapter of Phi Sigma Kappa (University of South Carolina):
Quote:
The story of Gamma Triton begins in Columbia, South Carolina in the early 1900 with a determined group of young men and a few restrictive state laws. Back in those days, South Carolina had an Anti-Fraternity Law on the books that prevented the formation and operation of fraternal organizations within the state.
To get around these restrictions, the founding members decided instead of forming a “fraternity”, they would instead form a “club”; the Hermes Club. The Hermes Club was established to band together “club members” for the mutual benefit of all. Thus the Hermes Club was born, a true fraternity of all aspects except for the name.
That finally changed in 1929 with the abolition of the Anti-Fraternity Law. The gentlemen of Phi Sigma Kappa then officially opened their arms to the members of the Hermes Club, establishing the third fraternity to be chartered within the State of South Carolina.
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If I had to guess, I'd guess that the effect of the SC anti-fraternity law at Erskine was to have the existing literary societies, which were losing their prominence on many other campuses, emerge as fraternity alternatives. I would also guess that when the anti-fraternity law was repealed, students at Erskine didn't feel a strong need for fraternities because the literary societies were filling that need.
Fraternities across the country saw a boost after WWII. Lots of GIs were going to school on the GI Bill, and many of them were looking for the kind of commeraderie that fraternities offered. Again, if I had to guess, the move by the literary societies to become more social after WWII reflects how that played out at Erskine.
As for the counterculturalism of the 1960s, being familiar with Erskine and with
the ARP Church, I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that 1960s counterculturalism wasn't much of a factor at Erskine. Erskine would have been a pretty socially conservative campus in the 60s, and I'd guess that the move for the literary societies to look "more Greek" would have just been the logical progression of what had started after WWII. Who knows -- it might even have been a reaction of sorts to the way Greek life was being viewed on other, more liberal campuses.
For what any of this may be worth.