Date of Award
5-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
Committee Chair/Advisor
Dr. D'Ondre Swails
Committee Member
Dr. Camden Burd
Committee Member
Dr. Abel Bartley
Committee Member
Dr. Vernon Burton
Abstract
This paper explores how school desegregation in Richland County Schools District One between 1940 to 1974 reshaped racial and political dynamics in Columbia, South Carolina. Although twenty-two students successfully desegregated the district's public schools in 1964, the process proceeded slowly, facing local and state resistance. By 1969, fewer than 1,300 Black students attended formerly White schools, while White flight to private institutions and neighboring county school districts accelerated. National challenges to this gradualist approach resulted in the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Green v. New Kent County case (1968), that determined “freedom of choice” plans to be insufficient to establish a “desegregated, unitary school system.” This paper examines how both Brown v. Board of Education, and Green shaped policy, resistance, and advocacy in Richland County and the state more broadly.
Centering the activism of Modjeska Monteith Simkins and the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, this paper contextualizes local organizing within broader state and national developments. In Columbia, efforts to desegregate public schools were deeply entangled with battles over voting rights and equal pay underscoring the interdependence of Civil Rights activism at the local level. Drawing on the policies and initiatives advanced by the NAACP, as well as state legislative and gubernatorial platforms, this study contributes a localized perspective to Civil Rights historiography. Furthermore, it argues that changes in national politics, such as the rise of a Republican based majority, and the media portrayal of Black resistance efforts, shaped the implementation and consequences of desegregation in South Carolina.
Recommended Citation
Thompson, Otiana, "Sign Of The Times: School Desegregation in Richland County Schools District One, 1944-1974." (2026). All Theses. 4748.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/4748