THE YEAR IS 2009. Citizens of the United States enjoy freedom, privileges, and for many, an opportunity to participate in the “American dream.” BUT, approximately 40 years ago this was not true for African Americans living in the South.
I reside in Columbia, South Carolina, and today as I sit and watch people – Black people, White people, - people of all races -walk with their lawn chairs, blankets, and coolers, sit, and enjoy a family summer concert at Finlay Park, I can’t help but wonder, how many people know of the struggle? How many people really understand the struggle it took to change the southern “Jim Crow laws of racial separation” which made such a simple family gathering as this in a public park possible?
A trip to the Richland
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Unfortunately, about
40 years, yes approximately 40 years ago I, because of the color of my skin, would not have been allowed to “step foot” on the grounds of the South Carolina State House. But, thanks to the activists, the agitators for equal rights – young people and people who were sick and tired of being shut out, who “took to the streets.” They protested until the unequal and unjust Jim
Crow laws were changed. Checkout Cecil Williams’ book, Out of the Box in Dixie, in which he states “…in 1961, 200 individuals were jailed for trespassing while marching around the
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As reflected in the book, Lil’ Weary Feet, by Vennie Deas Moore, his case, “Levi Pearson vs. Clarendon County dated July 28, 1947, was dismissed due to “legal technicalities. Subsequently filed, however, was the Petition of Harry Briggs, et al to the Board of Trustees for School District No. 22 dated November 11, 1949, against the
Clarendon County Board of Education.”
The renowned Harry Briggs, et al case, Civil Action #2505, was filed in the U.S. District Court in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 17, 1950, by Attorneys Harold R. Boulware, Thurgood Marshall, and Robert L Carter of 11091/2 Washington Street, Columbia, South Carolina. It cited all of the discriminatory practices of the Clarendon County Board of Education. This case was later included in what is now known as “Brown versus Board of Education of 1954” in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the “Jim Crow laws of separate but equal was unconstitutional.”
Today, school buses are provided for all children, but more importantly the case resulted in the United States Supreme Court’s ruling that would change the South, to supposedly an all integrated South without Jim Crow