Challenges to unequal public schools for African American students in South Carolina began in Clarendon County when Levi Pearson sued the local school district for school buses for his children and other African American students in 1947. While his case never came to trial due to a technicality, it began the journey toward challenging segregated schools.
Clarendon County and state organization leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) worked with national and South Carolina lawyers to find parents willing to sign a petition asking for equal schools despite the risk of severe retaliation. On November 11, 1949, 107 people signed a petition asking for equal school facilities, supplies, transportation, teachers – equal everything. When the school board did not grant their petition, they took their lawsuit, Briggs v. Elliott, to federal court.
For decades, NAACP lawyers had been building cases to challenge racial segregation in public schools. Federal Judge J. Waties Waring encouraged Thurgood Marshall to refile the case to challenge racial segregation rather than making schools equal. The case was filed on May 17, 1950, and re-filed in December, but the U.S. District Court in South Carolina ruled in favor of maintaining segregation. Undeterred, the NAACP appealed the case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. South Carolina’s case was eventually consolidated with four other cases from across the country under the title Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision in favor of all those who found the courage to fight for their rights. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”
