The Civil Rights Movement and Economic Issues in Present-Day SC

The Civil Rights Movement

Significance of the NAACP in South Carolina

Jim Crow laws, restrictions on voting through poll taxes and literacy tests, and discrimination in the workplace , continued to limit the social, political, and economic opportunities of African Americans in the twentieth century. It is important for students to understand that the movement for civil rights in the United States continued from the colonial period.

Throughout the twentieth century, organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality, the National Association of Colored Women, and the National Urban League actively sought the recognition of African American rights and the fulfillment of the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments.

The Civil Rights Movement intensified after World War II. The movement for civil rights accelerated as a result of the “victory abroad, victory at home” (Double V) campaign of African Americans, the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the influence of mass media, and the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Elmore v Rice Case

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the legal approach and brought cases to the courts that challenged the prevailing practices of discrimination and laid the groundwork for change. Among many other cases, the NAACP challenged the exclusion of African American voters from participation in the South Carolina Democratic Party’s selection of candidates.

The Democratic Party had dominated politics in South Carolina and the South since Reconstruction so the white primary effectively excluded blacks from having any say in selecting the state’s elected officials. The United States Supreme Court ruled in Elmore v. Rice (1947) that the white primary was unconstitutional. African Americans, who continued to face white hostility, still had to overcome intimidation but they now had the opportunity to impact the selection of candidates and subsequently the eventual office holders in solidly Democratic South Carolina.

The role that Briggs v. Elliot played in the Brown v. Board of Education decision in overturning Plessy v. Ferguson

The landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) started with a simple request. The parents of African American students in Clarendon County, South Carolina requested a bus to take their children to their all-black school. Some children had to walk eighteen miles to and from school each day. Since the county’s [2375] white children had [30] school buses for their use and its [6531] black students had none, parents at Scott’s Branch School felt that the “separate-but-equal” doctrine established by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson required the school district to pay for the gas and repairs on the used bus that the families bought to take their children to school. Parents did not originally seek integration but equality.

The original case was dismissed due to a technicality. With the assistance of local leaders including Modjeska Monteith Simkins and the NAACP, parents brought suit against the school district in a new case, Briggs v. Elliot, for equal treatment under the law as required by the fourteenth amendment. In federal district court, the counsel for the state of South Carolina admitted that separate schools for African Americans were unequal but claimed that the state had initiated a building program that would bring the African American schools up to par with the white schools.

The court, therefore, ruled in favor of the school district. The NAACP then appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. Briggs v. Elliot was one of five cases that became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision. In Brown the Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and ruled that separate was inherently unequal. The court further ruled that African American students should be integrated into classrooms with white children with “all deliberate speed.”

South Carolina's reaction to the Brown v. Board decision, including the effects of "equalization" of schools, the creation of the Southern Manifesto, non-violent protests such as sit-ins, and the impact of the Friendship Nine and the Orangeburg Massacre

South Carolina officials resisted efforts to integrate schools in a variety of ways. While the Briggs case was still pending in the federal courts, South Carolina launched a statewide effort to improve education by making separate African American schools equal to schools for whites and were able to remain segregated under the Plessy “separate but equal” doctrine. This massive building program is known as the equalization effort. Modern schools for African American students were built throughout the state.

When the equalization effort was not successful in persuading the courts that “separate but equal” should be upheld, the Brown ruling was met with widespread and sometimes violent opposition and delay. The Governor of South Carolina, James F. Byrnes, encouraged this resistance. White Citizens Councils were established to coordinate efforts to intimidate African Americans who petitioned for equal treatment and to label whites who supported the court’s ruling as traitors to their race.

2. Creation of the Southern Manifesto

South Carolina’s Senator Strom Thurmond authored the Southern Manifesto, signed by all but three of the Congressmen from the Deep South [101 in total]. This document condemned the Brown decision for upsetting the relationship of whites and African Americans in the South and encouraged resistance to desegregation. Resistance included the establishment of numerous ‘white flight’ private academies, school choice, and plans for the voluntary closing of public schools. For almost two decades, South Carolina sought to avoid the integration of public schools. Similar actions were taken in other southern states. It would be the early 1970s before full-scale integration occurred in most South Carolina schools.

3. Non-violent protests such as sit-ins and the impact of the Friendship Nine

The Friendship Nine were students at Friendship College who introduced a new tactic to the movement in the early 1960s. While planning a sit-in at a Rock Hill lunch counter, the students decided that if arrested, they would not accept bail but would serve out their sentences. By so doing, they brought greater public attention to their protest against segregation. Other protesters across the country adopted the "jail no bail" tactic, and served out their jail sentences, thus straining the local prison system and drawing the attention of the national press.

4. Orangeburg Massacre

In 1968, students at South Carolina State College protested the segregation of a bowling alley in Orangeburg. Several days later police who had been called in to keep the peace, opened fire on students, injuring dozens and killing three. The officers were acquitted but a wounded student was convicted of “riot” because of his activity at the bowling alley several nights before the shooting. By 1968, the national press paid little attention to the event and it was overshadowed by the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. King in April.

The Brown decision prompted other civil rights actions throughout the South and South Carolina was affected. In response to the actions of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Supreme Court ruled that city buses could not be segregated. South Carolina's bus companies ignored the ruling.

When students staged a sit-in at a North Carolina lunch counter, South Carolina students followed their example throughout the state and initiated a new tactic. Grassroots protests and demonstrations throughout South Carolina echoed the national movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The response to white leadership of South Carolina was tempered by their desire to attract economic investment to the state. Pictures of protests and violence in other southern states broadcast on nationwide television and in newspapers did not encourage such investment. Consequently, in 1963, South Carolina began to slowly and deliberately integrate public facilities. Beginning with Clemson College and followed by the University of South Carolina, state colleges were integrated without the violence which engulfed campuses in other southern states. This relatively peaceful integration of public facilities in South Carolina was marred by the violence of the Orangeburg Massacre. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were enforced in South Carolina and public schools were finally desegregated as a result of another court ruling fifteen years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

The role of Septima Clark, Modjeska Simkins, and Matthew Perry in advancing civil rights for African Americans in South Carolina

Although many South Carolinians played a significant role in the civil rights movement, most notable among them are Septima Clark, Modjeska Simkins and Matthew Perry. Septima Poinsette Clark was a public school teacher. In a case brought by the NAACP, she sought equal pay for African American and white teachers.

Septima Poinsett Clark

A member of the NAACP, Clark left South Carolina when the state legislature passed a bill saying that public employees could not belong to any civil rights organization. Clark later taught at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee where many civil rights leaders learned the strategy of nonviolent direct action. Clark served in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. King. Clark founded citizenship schools to improve literacy among the African American community and increase voter registration.

Modjeska Monteith Simkins

Modjeska Monteith Simkins was a teacher and public health worker. An active member of the NAACP, she also participated in the efforts to equalize teachers’ salaries and to reform the white primary (Elmore v Rice). Simkins also helped write the declaration for the lawsuit that asked for the equalization of Clarendon County schools (Briggs v Elliot).

Matthew Perry

Matthew J Perry was the first graduate of the new law school at South Carolina State to pass the bar exam. As a civil rights lawyer, Perry was instrumental in bringing cases in South Carolina to challenge segregation. African American efforts to push for integration of schools to conform to the Brown ruling were first pursued at the college and university level because these would be least resisted by white parents. Perry defended the right of an African American student to attend Clemson University. Perry also fought for the adoption of single-member districts in South Carolina's House of Representatives, making it possible for more black lawmakers to get elected. Perry later served as South Carolina’s first African American federal judge.

Page updated

Report abuse