What to know about SC State University, a historic Black school seeking a new leader
For 125 years, South Carolina State University has focused on providing educational opportunities for African American students at its campus in Orangeburg, about 40 miles southeast of Columbia.
Now, the historic Black college will be searching for a new president as it forges into the future.
James Clark, who was the 12th president of South Carolina State, was ousted Tuesday by the school’s board of trustees. The board voted 10-3 to remove Clark from the presidency, with the vote coming after a two-hour closed-door executive session. The board has had several such sessions in recent meetings to discuss a personnel matter.
Clark had been the president since 2016.
Enrollment has dipped at S.C. State in the last decade, decreasing from just more than 4,300 in 2011 to just under 2,500 in 2019, a 43% decline, according to data from the S.C. Commission on Higher Education.
Alexander Conyers, a retired U.S. Army Colonel and vice president at S.C. State, will take over as president in an interim role.
S.C. State was founded in 1896 as a public college for Black youth, according to a history on the school website. Since 1966, it has been open to white students and faculty but has largely kept to its mission as a historically Black university. The school has more than 100 buildings spread across 160 acres of land at its main campus in Orangeburg.
The university boasts a host of notable alumni, including:
- Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn;
- US Army. Brig. Gen. Milford Beagle, who recently became the commanding general of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum in New York after a three-year stint in command of Columbia’s Fort Jackson;
- The late Ernest Finney Jr., who was the first Black justice on the South Carolina Supreme Court since Reconstruction;
- Current S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Beatty;
- Late U.S. District Judge Matthew Perry, Jr.;
- And football Coach Willie Jeffries, who was inducted into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame.
Four SCSU Bulldog football alums — Harry Carson, Deacon Jones, Donnie Shell and Marion Motley — are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Among S.C. State alums currently in the NFL, linebacker Darius Leonard led the Indianapolis Colts in tackles in 2018.
The university boasts more than 30,000 graduates, according to the school website.
S.C. State has known tragedy. It was the site of the Orangeburg Massacre in Feb. 1968. That’s when state highway patrolmen opened fire on Black protesters on the campus. Three people were killed and another 28 were injured in the incident. Despite being a particularly deadly and violent incident amid the civil rights movement, Smithsonian Magazine noted the massacre was, for years, one of the more little known tragedies of the time.
S.C. State recently received a financial boost from the estate of late Army Chief Warrant Officer Lamar Powell, a Korean War and World War II veteran who died in 2015. Powell had a close friendship with S.C. State alum Ned Felder, also an Army veteran. Powell’s estate gave $2.75 million to S.C. State, the school announced in May, funding that will support the university’s Student Success and Retention Center.
There are eight historically Black colleges or universities in South Carolina, and they have proved to be a key part of the Palmetto State’s fabric, both culturally and economically. According to an HBCU study, South Carolina’s Black colleges have a $463 million annual economic impact on the state and are responsible for nearly 5,000 jobs.
This story was originally published July 13, 2021 at 3:54 PM.
