Desegregation Cases after Brown
Bolstered by the Supreme Court’s rulings, the NAACP intensified its efforts to compel South Carolina to integrate its public schools.
The first major school desegregation moment in the state came when Harvey Gantt successfully challenged Clemson University’s policy of segregation. In January 1963, Gantt became the first African American to attend the university. That summer, Henrie Monteith won her case to desegregate the state’s flagship school, the University of South Carolina, and in September, she, Robert Anderson, and James Solomon became the first three African American students at USC since Reconstruction.
Learn more about the people who integrated South Carolina’s public universities!
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Desegregation in Charleston
In Charleston, families successfully sued the school district in Brown v. School District No. 20, Charleston, desegregating K-12 public schools in South Carolina in September. Similar rulings followed over the next few years across the state, although in many cases only a few African American students entered formerly white-only schools.
The Ongoing Struggle
Throughout South Carolina, local school systems delayed and resisted desegregating their schools. Because of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing local control of desegregation, African Americans continued filing lawsuits in individual school systems.
Brunson v. Board
of Trustees of Clarendon County
In Clarendon County, six years after the Brown v. Board decision, African American families still fought to desegregate public schools. On April 13, 1960, fifteen families, working with the NAACP, filed a petition which became the basis for Brunson v. Board of Trustees of Clarendon County.
In 1965, after years of delays, a U.S. District court ordered Clarendon County to allow families to choose the schools they attended. That year, five African American students — Charles Hilton, Mary Oliver, Lucretia Ragin, Idella Tindall, and Rita McDonald — transferred out of Scott’s Branch High School to enroll at the formerly all-white Summerton High School. Many local whites, in turn, withdrew their children from public school and sent them to the private school, Summerton Baptist School, later renamed Clarendon Hall.
The same pattern unfurled throughout South Carolina. As courts ruled that schools had to desegregate, white parents chose to send their children to private schools instead. Over 250 of these schools, called segregation academies, opened in South Carolina between 1964 and 1977.
“Landmark City after 16 Years,” The Washington Post
Legacies
It was not until 1970 – 16 years following the Brown v. Board decision, 21 years after the “Equal Everything” petition, and 23 years since Levi Pearson asked Clarendon County to fund a school bus for African American students – that public schools across South Carolina fully desegregated by court order. This new order required districts to produce racially diverse schools through rezoning or busing.
However, discrimination remained even after legal segregation had ended. School districts overwhelmingly sent African American students to previously all-white schools rather than sending white students to formerly African American schools. Schools that had served African American communities for decades closed, often without the input of African American residents. Black teachers and principals were demoted or fired. Students, teachers, families, and alumni lost institutions with important traditions and community connections.
Moving African American students into previously all-white schools did not create equal learning conditions for all students. African American students continued to face discrimination from white teachers and students. Instituting attendance zones and policies to bus students to schools for desegregation angered many white families, who pushed to end them. In the 1990s, the United States Supreme Court allowed many busing programs and desegregation orders to end. As of the 2021-2022 school year, eight school districts in South Carolina remained under desegregation orders.
Courtesy of the State Newspaper Photograph Archive, Richland Library
Schools across the country became segregated once more, not by law, but because of where people lived and the choices made by school districts. As of 2021, around 60 percent of Black and Hispanic students in the United States attended schools where over 75 percent of the students were people of color. Students across the country continue to experience the negative effects of segregation, despite the Brown ruling. Still, supporters of racially diverse schools continue to use the Brown decision to push local, state, and federal governments to make schools equal for all students.
Briggs v. Elliott, as one of the Brown cases, changed the United States. The efforts of the petitioners and the arguments of their attorneys convinced the highest court in the country to change longstanding laws and traditions. Following the decision, students across the U.S. went to school with people of different races. The shift was not quick, or easy, but the work undertaken by the African American residents of Clarendon County to improve schools for their children shaped the history of American education.
Courtesy of the State Newspaper
Courtesy of South Caroliniana Library
