The Original "Brown" Town after 50 Years: Desegregated, Not Integrated

• Published in: The Education digest 2004-05, Vol.69 (9), p.7
• Main Author: Cook, Glenn
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Affirmative Action; African American Children; African Americans; Boards of Education; Budgets; Civil Rights; Civil rights movements; Counties; Court Litigation; Desegregation; Educational History; Equal Education; High School Students; Leaders; Litigation; Minority Groups; Municipalities; Oral History; Private Schools; Racial Discrimination; Racial Integration; Racial Relations; School Desegregation; School Districts; School systems; South Carolina; Student Transportation; United States History; White Students; Whites
• ISSN: 0013-127X; 1949-0275

The story of Summerton and its schools is a footnote to history. On the surface, daily life in this small South Carolina town today is a far cry from a half century ago. At the same time, little seems to have changed--and many residents seem to prefer it that way. And with good reason, for the townspeople, especially whites, still cast a wary eye at Summerton's place in history. It is home to Briggs v. Elliott, the first of five cases later consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education and arguably the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. To most, Brown is a lawsuit over an African-American girl from Kansas not allowed to attend an all-white school. But Briggs, not Brown, was the foundation for abolishing separate but equal schools. Thurgood Marshall, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People lawyer who led the battle to end segregation in U.S. classrooms, argued Briggs, not Brown, before the Supreme Court. "It all started here," says Joe De Laine, Jr., namesake and son of the pastor whose efforts led to the litigation. "And yet people don't want to acknowledge it. They would be happy if it all just went away." But De Laine and the original plaintiffs' descendants, many of whom moved away and returned after retiring, are working to change that. Now in their sixties and seventies, they want Summerton to acknowledge and embrace its place in history. They want this hamlet--still dominated in population by blacks and in power by whites--to educate its children equally and equitably.