‘Untold history’: USC and NPS determined to showcase SC’s role in civil rights movement

South Carolina has a rich civil rights history. The University of South Carolina and its Center for Civil Rights History and Research are receiving $3.4 million from the National Park Service to share this legacy.

USC hosted a celebration of the partnership with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, National Park Service Director Chuck Sams, U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a Columbia Democrat, and Columbia community members.

“We must invest in opportunities that offer the chance for the true and honest stories straight from survivors and their descendants,” Haaland said. “It’s when we explore injustice that we can ensure that it never happens again. ... Our story is America’s story.”

The money will expand existing education and research, digitize library collections and support programming and tours across the African American Civil Rights Network in South Carolina.

It has been “a long time coming,” said Bobby Donaldson, director of the center and professor of history at USC.

“South Carolina was essential in the evolution of the civil rights movement, and regrettably, most of the museum collections and textbooks we have overlook South Carolina or the events are buried in the footnotes,” Donaldson said. “The hope and the ambition of the center and the partnerships we’re developing is that we will lift those stories from the footnotes and give them greater visibility.”

The South Carolina case Briggs v. Elliot was one of several that played a pivotal role in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregated schools unconstitutional.

In 1954, Sarah Mae Flemming was assaulted and removed from a bus in Columbia. She became the face of transportation desegregation in South Carolina and served as an example for civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

Charleston native Septima Clark was considered the “mother” of the civil rights movement by Martin Luther King Jr., Clyburn said.

These are only some of the countless stories the Center for Civil Rights will be able to discover and share.

Clyburn said he had always been concerned that South Carolina’s role in the movement was never memorialized. He petitioned for the center’s funding.

“I’m a little emotional about this day,” Clyburn said.

For him, and many others, these stories are not history, but lived experiences. Clyburn, whose congressional papers helped launch the Center for Civil Rights in 2015, was deeply ingrained in South Carolina’s civil rights movement in his youth.

“I think those who are here today are reminded that there is a greater interest, well beyond our campus, in part because this work, this history, helps to tell their story and to document their experiences,” Donaldson said.

Constance Caddell, an archivist for the center and a doctoral student in USC’s College of Information Science, has worked with the center for three years. She said it’s exciting to see it grow.

“It’s gone far beyond what I even imagined,” she said.

Additional grants from the park service totaling $1.5 million will go towards renovating the former Booker T. Washington High School Auditorium.

The school opened in 1916 and was Columbia’s only high school for African Americans. It closed in 1974 as part of the desegregation of Columbia schools and was bought by USC. The remaining auditorium was named to the National Register of Historic Places.

Funds will go towards window renovation, fire sprinkler updates and a community meeting room. A new permanent display of “Justice for All,” an exhibit chronicling the history of Ward One and Wheeler Hill neighborhoods in Columbia, will be housed there as well.

Donaldson said the center has worked to document South Carolina’s civil rights activists for years, but this will be the first time there will be a space to share these stories.

Reginald Scott, an alum and president of Booker T. Washington’s class of 1947, said he’s glad to see it happen.

“The school is a treasure,” Scott said.