USCS News

              University of South Carolina Spartanburg

                        800 University Way                                                                                            

                                Spartanburg, SC  29303                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                For Immediate Release

January 22, 2004

Contact: Tammy Whaley, 864-503-5210

              or twhaley@uscs.edu                          

 

 

USCS Plans Symposium To Commemorate 50th Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education

 

Spartanburg, S.C. – The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina Spartanburg will host a four-part symposium entitled “Brown v. Board of Education: A Half-Century Revolution” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case that ended state-mandated segregation in the public schools. Guest speakers and participants include those who were personally involved and/or affected by the decision and renowned scholars.

“The decision changed much more than the racial mix in classrooms. Among its many ramifications, the case demonstrated a method of legal reasoning that departed significantly from the precedent-based reasoning of all previous rulings,” said Dr. M.B. Ulmer, acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at USCS. “The change in the court’s logic required a change in the logic of those who make the laws. The changes in laws required a change in the logic of those of us who are subject to the laws. II think it no exaggeration to say that Brown v. Board was a revolution thatI changed the way we as individuals think about ourselves, our society and our relation to each other.”

In 1954, the Supreme Court Justices directed their legal clerks to conduct an analysis, using a “typical Southern city,” to seek to examine whether and how desegregation could be implemented. These clerks chose Spartanburg, South Carolina. In that sense, the revolution of Brown v. Board all started right here in our community.

The first of the four events entitled Brown v. Board of Education: A Historical Overview will be held on Tuesday, February 3 at 7:00 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center at the University of South Carolina Spartanburg. Dr. Vernon Burton, a professor of history and sociology at the University of Illinois and one of the nation’s most respected Southern historians, will be the guest speaker. He has authored more than 100 articles and has edited or authored seven books.

Joining Dr. Burton as panelists will be Joseph DeLaine, Jr., Dr. Carmen Harris and Dr. Stephen O’Neill. DeLaine is the son of Reverend Joseph A. Delaine, Sr., who played a major role in the case of Briggs vs. Elliott, the famous case from Clarendon County which was actually the central one of the five cases under Brown v. Board. DeLaine lived the history of the Briggs litigation and witnessed both its dramatic twists and turns and the price his family paid in the form of economic and other reprisals. He presently serves on the 50th Anniversary Brown v. Board Presidential Commission and resides in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Harris, an assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina Spartanburg, received a Ph.D. from Michigan State University and her dissertation focused on the development of the segregated Negro extension service in South Carolina. In addition to African American history, her research and teaching interests include U.S. history and Southern history. O’Neill is an associate professor and director of the Center for the Study of Piedmont History at Furman University and his scholarly interest is the modern South.

“Courting A Revolution: Legal Aspects of Brown v. Board of Education” will be held on Tuesday, February 24 at 7:00 p.m. in the Tracy Gaines Auditorium at Spartanburg Technical College. A dramatization of the Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board will be performed and a discussion by Dr. Eldon D. Wedlock, Jr., Dr. Robert Jeffrey, Dr. Todd Shaw and Dr. Claire Wofford will follow.

Wedlock holds the David H. Means Chair at the University of South Carolina School of Law. He has spoken extensively on civil liberties and constitutional law and has been active with the American Civil Liberties Union in South Carolina, especially during the turmoil of school integration and anti-war protests in the 1970s. Jeffrey is an associate professor of government at Wofford College. He has served on the Academic Board of Advisers for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation has chaired the Cobb County Community Development Commission and was a presidential appointee in the Reagan administration.

Shaw is an assistant professor of political science at University of South Carolina. His major research interests are African-American politics, social movements and urban politics. Wofford is director of the Center for Women’s Studies and Programs at University of South Carolina Spartanburg and an attorney. In the Clinton administration, she worked for the National Women’s Law Center and was an assistant speechwriter on First Lady Hillary Clinton’s staff.

“The Implementation of Brown v. Board of Education: Confronting Reality” will be held on Tuesday, March 23 at 7:00 p.m. in the Daniel Auditorium at Converse College. Judge Matthew J. Perry is a practicing attorney, civil rights leader and a judge of the federal courts in South Carolina is the guest speaker. He gained prominence as the state NAACP's attorney during the period of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s and especially in the admission of Harvey Gantt to Clemson University by in 1963. President Ford appointed him to the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, where he became the first African-American from South Carolina to be named a federal judge. President Carter appointed him as a U.S. District Judge for the District of South Carolina.

Joining Judge Perry as panelists will be Dr. Jack Bass, Hayes Mizell and

Dr. Cleveland Sellers. Bass, a political science professor at the College of Charleston, is a former journalist who observed first-hand the politics of South Carolina and the South, which he wrote about extensively. He is the author or co-author of six books about the American South, which focus on Southern politics, race relations and the role of law in shaping the civil rights era.

Mizell, now retired, began his career as an advocate for education reform by working to desegregate schools in South Carolina. Among many other accomplishments, he served as school board chairman in Richland County in one of the largest districts in the state.  Sellers is currently director of the African-American Studies program at University of South Carolina. As a young man, Sellers aligned himself with the veterans of the civil rights movement and as a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); he traveled the South in the 1960s urging African-Americans to register to vote.

The proposed fourth event is entitled “Miles Completed – Miles To Go: Race Relations Today in the South Carolina Upstate” and is scheduled for Tuesday, April 20 at 7:00 p.m. The guest speakers and location of this event are to be determined. The purpose of this session is to build upon the first three discussions to engage in a dialogue about what Brown v. Board and the civil rights revolution in general has meant to the Upstate of South Carolina: socially, politically, economically, and psychologically. The discussion will start from the premise that despite all the positives emanating from Brown v. Board and subsequent events, the region still has much to achieve in terms of race relations.

The symposium is sponsored in part by the Humanities Council SC, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities and endorsed by College Town.

All four events are free and open to the public. For more information, call (864) 503-5700 or visit www.uscs.edu/bvb

 

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