Author: Ophelia De Laine Gona
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611171741
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
At the forefront of a new era in American history, Briggs v. Elliott was one of the first five school segregation lawsuits argued consecutively before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1952. The resulting collective 1954 landmark decision, known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, struck down legalized segregation in American public schools. The genesis of Briggs was in 1947, when the black community of Clarendon County, South Carolina, took action against the abysmally poor educational opportunities provided for their children. In a move that would define him as an early—although unsung—champion for civil rights justice, Joseph A. De Laine, a pastor and school principal, led his neighbors to challenge South Carolina's "separate but equal" practice of racial segregation in public schools. Their lawsuit, Briggs, provided the impetus that led to Brown. In this engrossing memoir, Ophelia De Laine Gona, the daughter of Reverend De Laine, becomes the first to cite and credit adequately the forces responsible for filing Briggs. Based on De Laine's writings and papers, witness testimonies, and the author's personal knowledge, Gona's account fills a gap in civil rights history by providing a poignant insider's view of the events and personalities—including NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall and federal district judge J. Waties Waring—central to this trailblazing case. Though De Laine and the brave parents who filed Briggs v. Elliott initially lost their lawsuit in district court, the case grew in significance when the plaintiffs appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Three years after the appeal, the Briggs case was one of the five lawsuits that shared the historic Brown decision. However, the ruling did not prevent De Laine and his family from suffering vicious reprisals from vindictive white citizens. In 1955, after he was shot at and his church was burned to the ground, De Laine prudently fled South Carolina in order to save his life. He died in exile in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1974. Fifty years after the Supreme Court's decision, De Laine was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of his role in reshaping the American educational landscape. Those interested in justice, human rights, and leadership, as well as in the civil rights movement and South Carolina social history, will be fascinated by this inspiring tale of how one man's unassailable moral character, raw courage, and steely fortitude inspired a group of humble people to become instruments of change and set in motion a corrective force that revolutionized the laws and social practices of a nation.
Author: June M Thomas
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643362607
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 326
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Book Description
The battle for equality in education during the civil rights era came at a cost to Black Americans on the frontlines. In 1964 when fourteen-year-old June Manning Thomas walked into Orangeburg High School as one of thirteen Black students selected to integrate the all-White school, her classmates mocked, shunned, and yelled racial epithets at her. The trauma she experienced made her wonder if the slow-moving progress was worth the emotional sacrifice. In Struggling to Learn, Thomas, revisits her life growing up in the midst of the civil rights movement before, during, and after desegregation and offers an intimate look at what she and other members of her community endured as they worked to achieve equality for Black students in K-12 schools and higher education. Through poignant personal narrative, supported by meticulous research, Thomas retraces the history of Black education in South Carolina from the post-Civil War era to the present. Focusing largely on events that took place in Orangeburg, South Carolina, during the 1950s and 1960s, Thomas reveals how local leaders, educators, parents, and the NAACP joined forces to improve the quality of education for Black children in the face of resistance from White South Carolinians. Thomas's experiences and the efforts of local activists offer relevant insight because Orangeburg was home to two Black colleges—South Carolina State University and Claflin University—that cultivated a community of highly educated and engaged Black citizens. With help from the NAACP, residents filed several lawsuits to push for equality. In the notable Briggs v. Elliott, Black parents in neighboring Clarendon County sued the school board to challenge segregation after the county ignored their petitions requesting a school bus for their children. That court case became one of five that led to Brown v. Board of Education and the landmark 1954 decision that declared school segregation illegal. Despite the ruling, South Carolina officials did not integrate any public schools until 1963 and the majority of them refused to admit Black students until subsequent court cases, and ultimately the intervention of the federal government, forced all schools to start desegregating in the fall of 1970. In Struggling to Learn, Thomas reflects on the educational gains made by Black South Carolinians during the Jim Crow and civil rights eras, how they were achieved, and why Black people persisted despite opposition and hostility from White citizens. In the final chapters, she explores the current state of education for Black children and young adults in South Carolina and assesses what has been improved and learned through this collective struggle.
Author: Michelle A. Purdy
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469643502
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
When traditionally white public schools in the South became sites of massive resistance in the wake of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, numerous white students exited the public system altogether, with parents choosing homeschooling or private segregationist academies. But some historically white elite private schools opted to desegregate. The black students that attended these schools courageously navigated institutional and interpersonal racism but ultimately emerged as upwardly mobile leaders. Transforming the Elite tells this story. Focusing on the experiences of the first black students to desegregate Atlanta's well-known The Westminster Schools and national efforts to diversify private schools, Michelle A. Purdy combines social history with policy analysis in a dynamic narrative that expertly re-creates this overlooked history. Through gripping oral histories and rich archival research, this book showcases educational changes for black southerners during the civil rights movement including the political tensions confronted, struggles faced, and school cultures transformed during private school desegregation. This history foreshadows contemporary complexities at the heart of the black community's mixed feelings about charter schools, school choice, and education reform.
Author: Wanda Little Fenimore
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496843983
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
As early as 1947, Black parents in rural South Carolina began seeking equal educational opportunities for their children. After two unsuccessful lawsuits, these families directly challenged legally mandated segregation in public schools with a third lawsuit in 1950, which was eventually decided in Brown v. Board of Education. Amidst the Black parents’ resistance, Elizabeth Avery Waring, a twice-divorced northern socialite, and her third husband, federal judge J. Waties Waring, launched a rhetorical campaign condemning white supremacy and segregation. In a series of speeches, the Warings exposed the incongruity between American democratic ideals and the reality for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. They urged audiences to pressure elected representatives to force southern states to end legal segregation. Wanda Little Fenimore employs innovative research methods to recover the Warings’ speeches that said the unsayable about white supremacy. When the couple poked at the contradiction between segregation and “all men are created equal,” white supremacists pushed back. As a result, the couple received both damning and congratulatory letters that reveal the terms upon which segregation was defended and the reasons those who opposed white supremacy remained silent. Using rich archival materials, Fenimore crafts an engaging narrative that illustrates the rhetorical context from which Brown v. Board of Education arose and dispels the notion that the decision was inevitable. The first full-length account of the Warings’ rhetoric, this multilayered story of social progress traces the symbolic battle that provided a locus for change in the landmark Supreme Court decision.
Author: Charles Marsh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
This devastating and uncompromising memoir explores how good Christian folk acquiesced to the terror of the KKK, and how the author's prominent minister father eventually found the courage to share in the vision of a New South. 20 halftones.
Author: Amy Stuart Wells
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520256786
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
The class of 1980 -- Six desegregated high schools -- Racially mixed schools in a separate and unequal society -- We're all the same, aren't we? -- Close together but still apart: friendships across race only went so far -- Why it was worth it -- More diverse than my current life -- But that was a different time -- The souls of desegregated folk.
Author: Raymond Wolters
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870497506
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
Examines the results of the Supreme Court's 1954 decision on desegregation on the five school districts that participated in the Brown v. Board of Education case, and argues that the Court erred in moving beyond a policy of desegregation to one of integration.
Author: Amy Wells
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520942485
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
This is the untold story of a generation that experienced one of the most extraordinary chapters in our nation's history—school desegregation. Many have attempted to define desegregation, which peaked in the late 1970s, as either a success or a failure; surprisingly few have examined the experiences of the students who lived though it. Featuring the voices of blacks, whites, and Latinos who graduated in 1980 from racially diverse schools, Both Sides Now offers a powerful firsthand account of how desegregation affected students—during high school and later in life. Their stories, set in a rich social and historical context, underscore the manifold benefits of school desegregation while providing an essential perspective on the current backlash against it.
Author: Cindy Waszak Geary
Publisher: Light Messages Publishing
ISBN: 1611532515
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 163
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Book Description
"The challenges of identity, assimilation, achievement, and politics that were faced by Lahoma and Cindy are the same challenges our youth are facing today." –Jaki Shelton Green, poet and NC Literary Hall of Fame inductee The school careers of two teenage girls who lived across town from each other—one black, one white—were altered by a court-ordered desegregation plan for Durham, NC in 1970. LaHoma and Cindy both found themselves at the same high school from different sides of a court-ordered racial “balancing act.” This plan thrust each of them involuntarily out of their comfort zones and into new racial landscapes. Their experiences, recounted in alternating first person narratives, are the embodiment of desegregation policies, situated in a particular time and place. Cindy and LaHoma’s intertwining coming of age stories are part of a bigger story about America, education and race—and about how the personal relates to the political. This dual memoir covers the two women’s life trajectories from early school days to future careers working in global public health, challenging gender biases, racial inequities, and health disparities. LaHoma and Cindy tell their stories aware of the country's return to de facto school segregation, achieved through the long-term dismantling of policies that initially informed their school assignments. As adults, they consider the influence of school desegregation on their current lives and the value of bringing all of us into conversation about what is lost or gained when children go to school in black and white.
Author: Jessica Trounstine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108637086
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
Segregation by Design draws on more than 100 years of quantitative and qualitative data from thousands of American cities to explore how local governments generate race and class segregation. Starting in the early twentieth century, cities have used their power of land use control to determine the location and availability of housing, amenities (such as parks), and negative land uses (such as garbage dumps). The result has been segregation - first within cities and more recently between them. Documenting changing patterns of segregation and their political mechanisms, Trounstine argues that city governments have pursued these policies to enhance the wealth and resources of white property owners at the expense of people of color and the poor. Contrary to leading theories of urban politics, local democracy has not functioned to represent all residents. The result is unequal access to fundamental local services - from schools, to safe neighborhoods, to clean water.
