Advocates seek recognition for S.C. Brown v. Board of Education historical sites
In Columbia and Summerton are sites that relate to the Briggs v. Elliott court case in 1952 that would eventually lead to the historic Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated schools.
Monday, advocates urged for those sites to be recognized and funded by the National Park Service as part of the history of the Brown v. Board case that ended segregation in schools.
“People will have a better understanding that what occurred in the Supreme Court ruling in 1954 was not simply about a case in Kansas, but about cases across the country,” said Bobby Donaldson, director of the Center for Civil Rights History and Research at the University of South Carolina. “We argue that the most persuasive of those cases, that showed the very glaring disparities between black and white education, was in Clarendon County, South Carolina.”
Briggs v Elliott was the first of five similar cases that became Brown v. Board of Education.
House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, a Columbia Democrat, and Senator Chris Coons, D-Delaware, introduced legislation earlier this month to add schools in South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia and Washington D.C to expand the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site.
In front of the Modjeska Monteith Simkins House on Marion Street, advocates Catherine Fleming Bruce and Toya Williams explained why the schools and additional S.C. sites should be added to the National Trust for Historic preservation, a part of the NPS Affiliated Areas.
“All of these cities in South Carolina have such beautiful history, so we want to make sure it is commemorated well,” said Williams, a member of the Summerton Action Committee.
Williams is the great granddaughter of Levi Pearson, who sued the Clarendon County School District in 1947 for equalization that led to Briggs v. Elliott.
Simkins co-authored the petition for the school lawsuit in Clarendon County that led Thurgood Marshall to take the Briggs v. Elliott case.
Bruce and Williams are urging the Simkins House in Columbia and Liberty Hill AME Church, the Levi Pearson Home, the Harry and Eliza Briggs Home, St. Mark AME Church, Ebenezer Baptist Church and other historic Summerton sites be added to the affiliated areas.
Sites have to be added to the National Register of Historic places before becoming eligible for the NPS Affiliated Areas. The Simkins House and Summerton High School, the white school in Clarendon County during Briggs v. Elliott, are already on the National Register.
Donaldson and the Summerton Action Committee are fighting for the former black high school, Scott’s Branch, to be added to the list. Donaldson said that USC would partner with new Summerton sites by giving them documents and filings from the cases that are currently stored at the university.
Currently, the NPS only recognizes sites in Topeka, Kansas, as the National Historic Site for the case because Brown v. Board went to trial there. A spokesman for NPS could not be reached for comment.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation partnered with Clyburn and Coons to expand the National Historic Site across the country to represent the places each litigant in the Supreme Court case was from. In South Carolina, that would include the former Summerton and Scott’s Branch High Schools.
This story was originally published September 28, 2020 at 3:56 PM.
