The Briggs v. Elliott case began as a simple request to provide bus transportation. In addition to having separate and very inferior facilities, black children had to walk to school, sometimes many miles.
PHOTO: Mr. Harry Briggs and wife Eliza, plaintiffs in the landmark case of Briggs v. Elliott, and Rev. J.A. DeLaine after they had been forced to leave South Carolina due to the repercussions of helping to initiate a petition to acquire school buses for black children in Clarendon County.
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Many returning to Florence after World War II saw clearly, possibly for the first time, a great injustice in their own community...segregation. Brown versus Board of Education" changed race relations...
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Noted South Carolina historian Dr. Walter Edgar discusses the key issues in SC History. Desegregation and other social change in South Carolina is discussed: World War II – Catalyst for Change...
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The Civil Rights Movement has been part of an ongoing struggle since enslaved Africans were first brought to America. The modern Civil Rights Movement began in the 1940s and many changes had taken...
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This is the story of an African American girl born to a half-white, half-black brick mason who came from relative wealth and married into wealth, but she dedicated her life to helping the...
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In 1947 Judge J. Waties Waring's monumental ruling in the George Elmore suit (Elmore v. Rice) eliminated the all-white Democratic primary system in South Carolina. For the first time since 1876, the...
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Levi Pearson, and other parents whose children attended Scotts Branch High School, wanted the county to provide buses for their children. Mr. Pearson was encouraged by Rev. Joseph Armstrong DeLaine...
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Thurgood Marshall's entire legal career was devoted to pursuing equal justice for all. He argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court and won 29 of those cases, including his most significant, Brown v...
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Constructed in 1936, Dennis was the first high school for African Americans in Lee County, including Bishopville and nearby rural areas. In contrast with the much larger Bishopville High School, which...
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The building that housed Summerton High School from circa 1936 to the mid-1960s is located at 12 South Church Street in Summerton. In the middle of the twentieth century, the all-white high school was...
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The Plessy v. Ferguson decision set the precedent that "separate" facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were "equal." In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education case...