Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229 (1963), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court ruling that the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution forbade state government officials to force a crowd to disperse when they are otherwise legally marching in front of a state house.

The 187 petitioners consisted of African-American high school and college students who peacefully assembled at the Zion Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina on March 2, 1961.

The students marched in separate groups of roughly 15 to South Carolina State House grounds to peacefully express their grievances regarding civil rights of African-Americans.

"[2] While the majority in Edwards distinguished Feiner v. New York (1951), based on the absence of violence or threats from the petitioners' march to the state capital, Justice Clark stated that the breach of the peace convictions upheld in Feiner presented "a situation no more dangerous than that found here."

He argued that the City Manager's action may have averted a catastrophe because of the "almost spontaneous combustion in some Southern communities in such a situation.