Getting background information and general facts about your topic is a good way to start your research. This not only helps you better understand your topic, but it also helps you formulate the boundaries of your research and key terms for your thesis statement. It can be a helpful guide to begin to narrow down your topic into a coherent and specific area.
Struggling to Learn
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The battle for equality in education during the civil rights era came at a cost to Black Americans on the frontlines. In 1964 when fourteen-year-old June Manning Thomas walked into Orangeburg High School as one of thirteen Black students selected to integrate the all-White school, her classmates mocked, shunned, and yelled racial epithets at her. The trauma she experienced made her wonder if the slow-moving progress was worth the emotional sacrifice. In Struggling to Learn, Thomas, revisits her life growing up in the midst of the civil rights movement before, during, and after desegregation and offers an intimate look at what she and other members of her community endured as they worked to achieve equality for Black students in K-12 schools and higher education. Through poignant personal narrative, supported by meticulous research, Thomas retraces the history of Black education in South Carolina from the post-Civil War era to the present. Focusing largely on events that took place in Orangeburg, South Carolina, during the 1950s and 1960s, Thomas reveals how local leaders, educators, parents, and the NAACP joined forces to improve the quality of education for Black children in the face of resistance from White South Carolinians. Thomas's experiences and the efforts of local activists offer relevant insight because Orangeburg was home to two Black colleges-South Carolina State University and Claflin University-that cultivated a community of highly educated and engaged Black citizens. With help from the NAACP, residents filed several lawsuits to push for equality. In the notable Briggs v. Elliott, Black parents in neighboring Clarendon County sued the school board to challenge segregation after the county ignored their petitions requesting a school bus for their children. That court case became one of five that led to Brown v. Board of Education and the landmark 1954 decision that declared school segregation illegal. Despite the ruling, South Carolina officials did not integrate any public schools until 1963 and the majority of them refused to admit Black students until subsequent court cases, and ultimately the intervention of the federal government, forced all schools to start desegregating in the fall of 1970. In Struggling to Learn, Thomas reflects on the educational gains made by Black South Carolinians during the Jim Crow and civil rights eras, how they were achieved, and why Black people persisted despite opposition and hostility from White citizens. In the final chapters, she explores the current state of education for Black children and young adults in South Carolina and assesses what has been improved and learned through this collective struggle.
Carolina Currents, Studies in South Carolina Cul - Volume 2. Recovering Lost Stories
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From the Piedmont to the Lowcountry, South Carolina is the site of countless engaging stories. The contributors to Carolina Currents share those stories, broadening our understanding of the state's unique and diverse histories and cultures. A venue for public-facing interdisciplinary scholarship, each volume presents a collection of essays that illuminates the complex interactions between the state's past and present. Essays in volume 2 cover topics including the Universities Studying Slavery project, the civil rights movement in South Carolina, and Asian immigrants in the Upstate; a review essay discusses recent work by South Carolina poets. With contributions from: Richard A. Almeida, Patti Burns, Joshua Casmir Catalano, Madison Cates, Robert M. Craig, Taylor Diggs, Jo Angela Edwins, Michael Emett, Mary Jo Fairchild, Kylie Fisher, Greg Garvan, Douglas E. Gray, Megan Hammeke, Lakin Hanna, Lynn Hanson, Christopher E. Hendricks, Landon Houle, Adam Houle, Christopher D. Johnson, Erica Johnson, Scott Kaufman, Eli Kibler, Jason Kirby, Eva Kiser, Felice Knight, Meredith A. Love, Natalie S. Mahaffey, Michael S. Martin, Jeremy D. Rentsch, Aïda Rogers, Steven Sims-Brewton, Rachel N. Spear
The Slow Undoing
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As the first comprehensive study of one state's federal district courts during the long civil rights movement, The Slow Undoing argues for a reconsideration of the role of the federal courts in the civil rights movement. It places the courts as a central battleground at the intersections of struggles over race, law, and civil rights. During the long civil rights movement, Black and White South Carolinians used the courts as a venue to contest the meanings of the constitution, justice, equality, and citizenship. African American plaintiffs and lawyers from South Carolina, with the support of Thurgood Marshall and other lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, brought and argued civil rights lawsuits in South Carolina's federal courts attempting to secure the vote, raise teacher salaries, and to equalize and then desegregate schools, parks, and public life. In response, white citizens, state politicians, and local officials, hired their own lawyers who countered these arguments by crafting new legal theories in an attempt to defend state practices and thwart African American aspirations of equality and to preserve white supremacy. The Slow Undoing argues for a reconsideration of the role of federal courts in the civil rights movement by demonstrating that both before and after Brown v. Board of Education, the federal district courts were centrally important to achieving and solidifying civil rights gains. It relies on the entire legal record of actions in the federal district courts of South Carolina from 1940 to 1970 to make the case. It argues that rather than relying on litigation during the pre-Brown era and direct action in the post-Brown era, African Americans instead used courts and direct action in tandem to bring down legal segregation throughout the long civil rights era. But the process was far from linear and the courts were not always a progressive force. The battles were long, the victories won were often imperfect, and many of the fights remain. Author Stephen H. Lowe offers a chronicle of this enduring struggle.
Paradoxes of Desegregation
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In this provocative appraisal of desegregation in South Carolina, R. Scott Baker contends that half a century after the Brown decision we still know surprisingly little about the new system of public education that replaced segregated caste arrangements in the South. Much has been written about the most dramatic battles for black access to southern schools, but Baker examines the rational and durable evasions that authorities institutionalized in response to African American demands for educational opportunity. A case study of southern evasions, ""Paradoxes of Desegregation"" documents the new educational order that grew out of decades of conflict between African American civil rights activists and South Carolina's political leadership. During the 1940s, Baker shows, a combination of black activism on a local level and NAACP litigation forced state officials to increase funding for black education. This early phase of the struggle in turn accelerated the development of institutions that cultivated a new generation of grass roots leaders. Baker demonstrates that white resistance to integration did not commence or crystallize after Brown. Instead, beginning in the 1940s, authorities in South Carolina institutionalized an exclusionary system of standardized testing that, according to Baker, exploited African Americans' educational disadvantages, limited access to white schools, and confined black South Carolinians to separate institutions. As massive resistance to desegregation collapsed in the late 1950s, officials in other southern states followed South Carolina's lead, adopting testing policies that continue to govern the region's educational system. ""Paradoxes of Desegregation"" brings much needed historical perspective to contemporary debates about the landmark federal education law, No Child Left Behind. Baker analyzes decades of historical evidence related to high-stakes testing, and concludes that desegregation, while a triumph for advantaged blacks, has paradoxically been a tragedy for most African Americans.
School Desegregation in the Carolinas
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