Harold Boulware was born in Irmo, South Carolina in 1913. His father was dean of Harbison Agricultural Institute while his mother taught music at the school. Boulware attended Harbison before going on to Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. He then went to Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., working as a waiter to help support himself while in school. In 1940, he was admitted to the South Carolina bar. The following year, he became chief counsel of the state NAACP.
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“We were trying to get our civil rights.”
Judge Harold Boulware to Dr. Grace McFadden, 1980
As the lead lawyer for the South Carolina NAACP, Boulware helped organize, argue, and win important economic and voting rights cases in South Carolina. Working with Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the pair won Duvall v. J.F. Seignous, Charleston teacher Viola Duvall’s suit against the school board for equal pay for Black teachers. In 1946, Boulware and Marshall won Elmore v. Rice, George Elmore’s challenge to the all-white Democratic Primary in South Carolina, and in 1948 they won the follow-up case of Brown v. Baskin, forcing the state to obey the end to segregated voting. Boulware withstood direct threats to his life. In a Greenwood trial, Boulware was followed, kidnapped, and beaten for defending a man. He still aggressively argued the case.
In the late 1940s, Boulware became involved with the residents of Clarendon County’s push for equal education. He worked first with Levi Pearson to petition the school board for buses for Black students and continued to serve as lawyer for the families who asked for equal school facilities. Boulware worked closely with Marshall and Robert Carter, also an NAACP lawyer, as the case advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Following the 1954 Supreme Court victory in Briggs v. Elliott, Boulware continued to work as a lawyer in South Carolina. In 1969, he became the first African American Associate Judge for the Columbia Municipal Courts, later serving as a judge in the Richland County Judicial System and a Family Court judge of the South Carolina Fifth Judicial Circuit. He passed away in 1983.
Letter from Harold Boulware to Joseph A. De Laine, Bus Petition
