South Carolina in the civil rights movement
Poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept African Americans from voting, and it was virtually impossible for someone to challenge the Democratic Party, which ran unopposed in most state elections for decades.
[1] Jim Crow laws, legalized by the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), created a district color line across the South.
Public segregation and voting restrictions were eventually reversed after the events of the civil rights movement in South Carolina and the United States during the 1950s and the 1960s.
The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution in the years following the Civil War provided for the enfranchisement of African Americans in South Carolina.
Consequently, the incumbent Republican governor, Daniel Henry Chamberlain, lost reelection and Democrat Wade Hampton III took office.
The Democrat's retaking of power in 1876 allowed for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which sought to terrorize African Americans through lynchings and fear.
In 1944, George Stinney, a 14-year-old black youth, was accused of murdering two white girls, aged 11 and 8, near Alcolu in Clarendon County, South Carolina.
[4][5] In 1946, Isaac Woodard, an African-American World War II veteran, was attacked hours after being honorably discharged on a bus ride to North Carolina.
[6] Such miscarriages of justice against African Americans, coupled with unfair discrimination laws, influenced South Carolina and the nation toward civil rights initiatives.
In 1951, Governor James F. Byrnes, supporting the "separate but equal" doctrine required by the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision, proposed a three percent sales tax increase to fund black schools.
The families of the African-American children in Summerton appealed, and Briggs v. Elliot was the first of five cases to be combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which required the desegregation of schools nationwide.
[11][12] In January 1963, Harvey Gantt became the first black student to attend Clemson University by order of Federal District Judge Charles Cecil Wyche.
On March 4, several white men burned a cross on the property of Allen University and threw bricks at one of the school buildings in retaliation to the protests.
The association's goal was to create collaboration among all South Carolina black schools to bring about integration by protesting stores and businesses with discriminatory policies.
187 of the 200 were arrested and found guilty of "disturbing the peace", though this verdict was overruled in the Supreme Court case Edwards v. South Carolina (1962).
The following week, Modjeska Monteith Simkins heard about Flemming's encounter and hired a lawyer to file a suit against South Carolina Electric and Gas, the owner of the bus.
[22][23] In October 1959, Major League Baseball player Jackie Robinson entered the whites-only waiting room at the Greenville Municipal Airport.
At an NAACP speech in Greenville, Robinson urged "complete freedom" and encouraged black citizens to vote and to protest their second-class citizenship.
The U.S. District Court case Brown v. South Carolina State Forestry Commission (1963) ruled that all public parks must desegregate.
[8][27] In December 1963, five movie theaters in Columbia agreed to admit one black couple daily, announcing they would fully desegregate by the end of January 1964.
In the winter of 1961, eight black men and women were arrested for attempting to use an all-white skating rink and swimming pool in Greenville's Cleveland Park.
Her lawyer, Matthew J. Perry, filed a suit against the business, citing a violation of the newly enacted Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Bessinger, a Baptist, believed God created whites to be superior to blacks, and that "his religious beliefs compel him to oppose any integration of the races whatever.
[30] On March 17, 1969, a group of 300 African-American women healthcare workers at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston protested unequal pay and unsafe working conditions.
The strike lasted over 100 days, and in late April, National Guard troops with tanks, gas masks, and bayonet-fixed rifles arrive to confront the healthcare workers.
Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina authored the Southern Manifesto, which denounced the 1954 Brown v. Board decision as "unwarranted" and referred to anti-segregationists as "agitators and troublemakers invading our States".
[35][36] In 1962, the South Carolina General Assembly voted to display the Virginia battle flag on top of the State House dome.
The church had been a location for many NAACP meetings during the civil rights movement, and it had been where many peaceful protests were planned, including the New Year's Day March that resulted in the desegregation of the Greenville–Spartanburg International Airport.
"[43] In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech in Charleston where he encouraged African Americans to vote and protest racial inequality.
Notable leaders include: The passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 led to the creation of the Legislative Black Caucus in the South Carolina legislature.
