Charleston and America’s Quest for Racial Equality

Welcome to Charleston, South Carolina!

Your arrival into historic Charleston will bring you to the Francis Marion Hotel, named for a hero of the American Revolutionary War of French Huguenot descent. Known for its tolerance of religious differences, the city is nevertheless the site where slave auctions took place and proponents of slavery started the secession movement leading to the American Civil War in 1861. 

Charleston and its surrounding areas are particularly rich in the African-American heritage of the country, and there are regular tours available to help you explore this heritage. In particular, your entry into Charleston will lead down the Museum Mile of Meeting Street, a street that spans the Old Slave Mart yet was home to two of the most important figures in the struggle against racial segregation in the United States: Septima Clark and Judge J. Waites Waring. Clark’s work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) led to some of the first legal victories for black educators in the United States, including her 1920 campaign to allow blacks to become school principals in Charleston. She ran this campaign while teaching at the Avery Normal Institute, now the Avery Institute of Afro-American History and Culture, which sits just blocks from our hotel and conference site. Clark’s good friend, Judge J. Waites Waring, played a critical role in the legal fight against racial discrimination, and was permanently ostracized from Charleston’s society for his support of African American claims for fair treatment.

The fight against racial discrimination is of course an ongoing struggle. In recent years, a group of small communities, led by Abbeville, sought equity in a lawsuit against the state in 1992 that, although initially dismissed, was revived in 2004 and continues to this day. This case will be of interest to CIES members, since Henry M. Levin, President of CIES and Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, provided expert testimony in this case. He will be providing the CIES Presidential Address on Tuesday evening, March 24th, 2009.

Visiting South Carolina: Local Attractions

Charleston, South Carolina has a unique character, and as long as you make the time to visit, why not stay the weekend? South Carolina is duly famed for its beaches and resorts (Myrtle Beach and the Golden Strand, Hilton Head), but there is a great deal more to explore in the area. Those interested in the environment may wish to visit Kiawah Island and Hunting Island State Park, where the loggerhead turtles breed. Educators and those concerned with social justice can visit Beaufort, Hunting Island, the area’s Gullah restaurants and art galleries, and the remarkable museum at the Penn Center.  While South Carolina may be best known for the fictional romance Gone with the Wind, one may also visit the grounds of local plantations, some of which are beginning to publicly acknowledge the whole of their history. 

Prepared by Doyle Stevick, Office of International and Comparative Education,  University of South Carolina.  For more information or references regarding these individuals and events, please contact Professor Doyle Stevick.

Select Resources:

David W. Southern, Beyond Jim Crow Liberalism: Judge Waring's Fight Against Segregation in South Carolina, 1942-52.  The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 66, No. 3. (Autumn, 1981), pp. 209-227. 

Septima Clark, Ready from Within.  (Fraser, The School in the United States, A Documentary History, has an excellent excerpt, pp. 257-265.)

R. Scott Baker, 2006, Paradoxes of Desegregation: African American Struggles for Educational Equity in Charleston, South Carolina, 1926-1972. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

The documentary With All Deliberate Speed provides footage of the early period of the struggle to end legal segregation of schools.