Preparing the Case
On May 17, 1950, NAACP attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of Harry Briggs and other Clarendon County families against the Board of Trustees of School District 22, including board chairman Roderick W. Elliott. The lawsuit called for Black students to receive the same access to quality school facilities and resources as white students. The trustees responded, claiming that schools for African American and white students were “substantially equal.”
Over the summer and into the fall, the NAACP refined its legal strategy, moving beyond demands for equal facilities toward a direct challenge to the constitutionality of segregation itself. At a pre-trial hearing, federal Judge J. Waties Waring signaled support for this bold approach, encouraging Thurgood Marshall to pursue a case that could strike at the heart of ‘separate but equal.’ On November 17, 1950, Waring dismissed the original suit, providing the NAACP an opportunity to refile with this expanded objective.
To do so, they needed renewed courage from the people of Clarendon County. Despite the retaliation, intimidation, and personal losses suffered by many who had signed the first petition, twenty families stepped forward once again. This time, they were not asking for equal buses or buildings—they were demanding an end to segregation itself.
Filed in December 1950, the new case would be argued in the District Court before a three-judge panel: J. Waties Waring, John J. Parker, and George Bell Timmerman.
South Carolina Governor James Byrnes feared that the NAACP’s suit would be successful and worked to develop a solution to maintain segregation. By early 1951, Byrnes and the legislature had a plan: South Carolina’s “equalization” program. Funded by the state’s first general sales tax, it would fund school construction and improvements so South Carolina could claim schools for African American students were equal to those for white students. This became known as equalization.
Over the next five years, the state would spend millions of dollars on school construction projects. Less than half went to schools for African American students.
The District Court
Hundreds of people packed the federal courthouse in Charleston on May 28, 1951.
To the surprise of a courtroom full of Clarendon County residents, attorney Robert Figg, representing the segregated school system, acknowledged the inequality and assured the judges that the state would pay for changes to the schools. The lawyers for the NAACP presented witnesses about how segregation itself impacted Clarendon County students. This included testimony from Dr. Kenneth Clark, a sociologist who studied the effects of segregation in Clarendon County from experiments with schoolchildren. Clark presented children with two dolls – one with dark skin, the other with light skin – and asked them to pick which doll they wanted to play with.
The results were complicated. While many of the African American children chose the white doll or described it as “nice” or “pretty,” many preferred the brown doll. Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark also asked children to color in drawings of children to look like themselves and to look like they would prefer someone else to look. Most children “tended to color themselves with a noticeably lighter color than their own,” and less than half of them “colored their preferences in brown.” Clark argued that segregation and discrimination were responsible for a negative self-image in African American children.
Briggs v. Elliott in the District Court
Although the court ruled in favor of the state, Judge J. Waties Waring issued a powerful dissent, declaring that segregation was “per se inequality.” His opinion provided a legal and moral foundation for the NAACP to appeal the decision to the United States Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court
The Supreme Court consolidated the Clarendon County case with four others that had been filed since Briggs — Bolling v. Sharpe from Washington, D.C., Brown v. Board of Education from Kansas, Davis v. Prince Edward County from Virginia, and Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart from Delaware. Together, these cases formed a historic legal challenge to segregated education, ultimately proceeding under the name of the Kansas case: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
In 1952, lawyers from across the country presented arguments in front of the Court. Marshall made the arguments for the Clarendon County families. He presented evidence from social scientists like Clark and argued that segregation prevented equality under the law. John Davis, a prominent constitutional lawyer and politician who presented over 200 cases in front of the Court, argued for South Carolina that the Constitution did not require African American and white students to attend school together, and regional customs should not be disturbed to change that.
After months of discussion, the Supreme Court could not come to a decision. They asked both sides to present their arguments to the Court again, this time focusing on the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law. In the fall of 1953, Earl Warren became the new chief justice. Many justices already opposed segregation and Warren’s leadership helped solidify the Court’s decision.
Supreme Court Rules in Brown v. Board of Education
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which included Briggs v. Elliott. In his decision, Warren wrote, “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
After Brown
However, the Court’s ruling did not mean immediate changes for the people of Clarendon County. The next year, the court heard arguments on how schools would go about ending segregation. In a decision called Brown II, the justices ruled that states had to desegregate their schools “with all deliberate speed.”
It would be over a decade before African American students in Clarendon County went to school with white students.
The Charlotte Observer, July 16, 1955, Courtesy of William D. Workman Papers, South Carolina Political Collections
“Court Allows Clarendon School Board Indefinite Time to End Segregation,” The Charlotte Observer, July 16, 1955
