The spring semester runs from March 2 through June 22, with classes meeting on Mondays 6:30–8:30pm at GROW in Columbia and streamed live to students on Zoom and at satellite sites in Lancaster, Orangeburg, Pendleton, Penn Center, and Sumter.
Dr. Robert Greene II, a tenured professor at Claflin University, is the school’s lead instructor. He is joined by Brett Bursey, Executive Director of the SC Progressive Network, which launched the Modjeska Simkins School in 2015.
Saturday, Feb. 28
Orientation, 1–5pm: Introductions, class protocols, course outline, and expectations. Students are strongly encouraged to attend in-person at GROW, 1340 Elmwood Ave. in Columbia.
Monday, March 2, 6:30pm
Class 1 — Stolen land. Stolen people. Stolen History.
Guest: Chris Judge, assistant professor at USC Lancaster Native American Studies Center in Lancaster. We will cover the advanced civilizations of ancient Africa up to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Sunday, March 8, 4pm
Deep Dive 1: First Nations. On Zoom and in-person at GROW. Guest presenters: Chris Judge, Assistant Director at University of South Carolina Lancaster; Beckee Garris, Program Assistant at University of South Carolina Lancaster, and Jay Bender, former attorney for the Catawba Indian Nation. You can view the recorded program HERE.
Monday, March 9, 6:30pm
Class 2 — South Carolina shapes a nation. Colonial era to statehood. This session reveals how the slave owners who represented South Carolina during the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia ensured that the new nation would allow slavery.
Sunday, March 15, 4pm
Deep Dive 2: The Intersection of Slavery and Capitalism. We are pleased to welcome back Dr. Justene Hill Edwards, associate professor of history at the University of Virginia.. Her field of research is the intersection of African –American history, slavery and American capitalism. Her first book, published in 2021, is Unfree Markets. The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina examines how the capitalist development of slavery influenced the economic lives of enslaved people. Her 2024 book, Savings and Trust; The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank, details how the Freedman’s Bank, a bold Reconstruction plan to securely hold deposits for African-American soldiers and newly freed civilians in the Beaufort area, was ultimately betrayed and how it shaped economic inequality in America.
To join on Zoom, register HERE.
Monday, March 16, 6:30pm
Class 3 — Nullification, Disunion, Secession, War. The Nullification Crisis was the first serious conflict of the Southern agricultural economy.
Monday, March 23, 6:30pm
Class 4 — Reconstruction
Guest: Dr. Vernon Burton, SC native and Emeritus professor at Clemson and the University of Illinois and a nationally respected expert on Abraham Lincoln and the Reconstruction era.
Monday, March 30, 6:30pm
Class 5 — “Redemption” of white supremacy and The Constitution of 1895 rolls back the gains of Reconstruction. Just after the Civil War, whites in South Carolina saw their fortunes “redeemed” through organized racist violence.
Monday, April 6, 6:30pm
Class 6 — Jim Crow settles in, socialism rises, labor organizes, and resistance to war brings on a Red Scare.
Guest: Dr. Kerry Taylor, Citadel professor and noted labor historian.
Monday, April 13, 6:30pm
Class 7 — It can’t happen here, can it? A fascist coup attempt of Wall Street and the continuing devolution of democracy.
Monday, April 20, 6:30pm
Class 8 — South Carolina’s militant human rights movement of the 1940s.
Guest: Dr. Erik Gellman, UNC professor and author of Death Blow to Jim Crow, which chronicles the suppressed history of the radical Southern Negro Youth Congress, which held an important conference in Columbia SC in 1946, organized in large part by Modjeska Simkins.
Monday, April 27, 6:30pm
Class 9 — Separate and unequal; South Carolina’s slow walk to integration. Dr. Robert Greene II will be joined by Cecil Cahoon, a 20-year Southern Regional Organizer for the National Education Association.
Monday, May 4
Class 10 — Losing hearts, minds, and empires.
Guest: Brett Bursey, Network Director. The class will explore how more than a century of unbridled US imperialism was upended in Vietnam.
Monday, May 11, 6:30pm
Class 11 – Gender, Sex, Autonomy, and Intersectionality
Guest: Dr. Ed Madden will lead our discussion, offering a brief history and an analysis of what has been won — and lost.
Monday, May 18, 6:30pm
Class 12 — Social/political theory, practice and analysis. Ours is the world’s only industrial democracy with a two-party system driven by corporate and monied interests. Let’s talk about it.
Monday, May 25, 6:30pm
Memorial Day — CLASS WILL NOT MEET
June 1 Class 13— Rise of the New Right and Left. When white supremacy and overt racism became socially unacceptable, the Christian right shifted their organizing tactics. So did the New Left.
Monday, June 8, 6:30pm
Class 14 — By What Authority, is English for quo warranto, a legal phrase that questions illegitimate exercise of privilege and power. How did this nation turn from “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”, to what Dr. King summarized as “War, Racism and Poverty? What constitutional barriers are there to Dr. King’s “radical revolution of values”?
Monday, June 15, 6:30pm
Class 15 — This is not what democracy looks like. We’ll review the state of South Carolina’s and the nation’s electoral systems. Can our rigged system be fixed?
Monday, June 22, 6:30pm
Class 16 — This is what democracy can look like. What are the practical ways to build a movement for social and political justice in the Palmetto State? Let’s look ahead, and let’s get busy.