• The Civil Rights Movement

Indicator 8-7.4: Explain the factors that influenced the economic opportunities of African American South Carolinians during the latter twentieth century, including racial discrimination, the Briggs v .Elliott case, the integration of public facilities and the civil rights movement, agricultural decline, and statewide educational improvement. (H, P, E)

The Fight for Equal Education

Liberty Hill School, 1947

1) List, using generalities the objects, activities, and people in the photograph.

2) Make three inferences from this photograph.

3) What questions do you have about the photograph?

Summerton Graded School,

19471) List, using

generalities the objects, activities, and people in the photograph.

2) Make three inferences from this photograph.

3) What questions do you have about the photograph?

Compare and Contrast these two schools.

Liberty Hill School, 1947

Summerton Graded School, 1947

Briggs v. Elliott

• Background:• Clarendon County – 1949• White children – 2,375 students and 30 buses• Black children- 6,531 students and NO buses• Parents of African American students

requested school buses.

Briggs v. Elliott

• Local leaders of the NAACP and 25 parents filed a lawsuit for equal treatment under the law as required by the 14th amendment to federal court.

• Briggs v. Elliott was the first of five cases that became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas Decision: Segregation in public schools was unequal

Southern Resistance

• Brown ruling met with violent opposition and delay by government – Equalization Effort: SC tried to make African

American schools equal to whites– White Citizens Councils created– Strom Thurmond’s Southern Manifesto– White flight

• Full scale integration did not occur until 1970s

The Civil Rights Movement in SC

Other Landmark Civil Rights Events

• Elmore v. Rice– Declared all white Primary elections

unconstitutional• Montgomery Bus Boycotts (Rosa Parks)– City busses could not be segregated

• Lunch Counter Sit-Ins– Greensboro– Friendship Nine

• Orangeburg Massacre

Notable Civil Rights Leaders from SC

• Septima P. Clark– Sought equal pay for African American and white

school teachers• Modjeska Monteith Simkins– Sought to equalize teacher salaries and reform the

all white primary– Assisted in the Briggs v. Elliot decision

• Matthew J. Perry– Civil rights lawyer who challenged segregation– SC’s First African American federal judge

Septima P. Clark

Matthew J. Perry

Modjeska Simkins