South Carolina played a prominent role in shaping the nature of public education in the United States. It also laid the framework for the conservative counterrevolution in the 1940s, and ultimately, for the New Right of the 1960s and ‘70s. The history of the long struggle for quality education in the state included policies of segregation, equalization, and desegregation that reflected and shaped legislative recalcitrance and malfeasance at the federal level. It was not until 1963 that school desegregation legally began in South Carolina. The Palmetto State lagged behind all but Mississippi, which opened its public schools to a small handful of African-American students in the fall of 1964, more than ten years after the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision declared that segregation was inherently inequitable and, therefore, unconstitutional. Too often the history of desegregation begins with the massive resistance by states like Mississippi and South Carolina, states that refused to desegregate and which employed legal maneuvers to maintain a segregated system. This focus pulls attention away from sustained grassroots organization and activism at the local level, which was focused on making the public school system live up to its promise of equality for all students.

Public education dates back to Reconstruction, when it embodied the desire of formerly enslaved communities to acquire literacy, which was equated with freedom. Focusing on the history of desegregation in South Carolina generates productive insights into how desegregation unfolded across the country, and how local actors defined “desegregation” in the context of the larger struggle. It also illustrates the nuanced experiences of attending desegregated schools. The perspective of those who experienced the desegregation of white schools at first-hand suggests that the struggle for desegregation occurred not only in the courtrooms that have been enshrined as the milestones that led to desegregation, but also in the classrooms which young people courageously desegregated on their own. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, more than half a century after the historic Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, the struggle for quality education continues.