{"id":4158,"date":"2025-11-11T22:01:55","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T22:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/?page_id=4158"},"modified":"2026-04-18T18:11:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T18:11:52","slug":"2026-class-schedule","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/2026-class-schedule\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Class Schedule"},"content":{"rendered":"

The spring semester runs from March 2 through June 22, with\u00a0classes meeting\u00a0on Mondays 6:30\u20138:30pm at GROW<\/a> in Columbia and streamed live to students on Zoom and at satellite sites in Lancaster, Pendleton, Penn Center, and Sumter.<\/b><\/p>\n

Dr. Robert Greene II<\/strong>, a tenured professor at Claflin University<\/a>, is the school’s lead instructor. He is joined by Brett Bursey<\/strong>, Executive Director of the SC Progressive Network<\/a>, which launched the Modjeska Simkins School in 2015.<\/p>\n

Saturday, Feb. 28<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Orientation, 1\u20135pm:<\/b> Introductions, class protocols, course outline, and expectations. Students are strongly encouraged to attend in-person at GROW, 1340 Elmwood Ave. \u00a0in Columbia.<\/p>\n

Monday, March 2, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 1<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Stolen land. Stolen people. Stolen History.<\/b><\/p>\n

Guest:<\/b>\u00a0Chris Judge<\/b>, assistant professor at USC Lancaster Native American Studies Center<\/a> in Lancaster. We\u00a0will cover the advanced civilizations of ancient Africa up to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunday, March 8, 4pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Deep Dive 1: First Nations.<\/strong> On Zoom and in-person at GROW. Guest presenters: Chris Judge<\/strong>, Assistant Director at University of South Carolina Lancaster; Beckee Garris<\/strong>, Program Assistant at University of South Carolina Lancaster, and Jay Bender<\/strong>, former attorney for the Catawba Indian Nation. You can view the recorded program HERE<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Monday, March 9, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 2<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 South Carolina shapes a nation. Colonial era to statehood.\u00a0<\/b>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.<\/p>\n

Sunday, March 15, 4pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Deep Dive 2: The Intersection of Slavery and Capitalism. We are pleased to welcome back <\/b>Dr. Justene Hill Edwards,<\/strong><\/a> associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. Her field of research is the intersection of African –<\/span>American history, slavery and American capitalism. Her first book, published in 2021, is Unfree Markets. <\/i><\/b>The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina <\/i><\/b>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<\/i><\/b>, details how the Freedman\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

You can view the recorded program HERE<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Monday, March 16, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 3<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Nullification, Disunion, Secession, War.\u00a0<\/b>The Nullification Crisis was the first serious conflict of the Southern agricultural economy.<\/p>\n

Sunday March 22, 4pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Deep Dive 3: Nationally acclaimed historians Dr. Vernon Burton<\/a> and Fergus Bordewich<\/a> will unpack South Carolina\u2019s outsized and unique role in ensuring the USA was born as a slave nation.<\/strong> Vernon, a SC native, spent days interviewing Modjeska Simkins in 1972 for his PhD dissertation at Princeton, and has become a leading scholar and author of Lincoln and Reconstruction. Fergus\u2019 2013 book, Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction,<\/i><\/b> focuses on the arrest of more than 1,000 white terrorists in South Carolina’s Upstate by federal troops in 1871.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You can view the recorded program HERE<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Monday, March 23, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 4<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Reconstruction<\/b><\/p>\n

Guest: <\/b>Dr. Vernon Burton<\/b><\/a>,\u00a0<\/b>SC native and Emeritus professor at Clemson and the University of Illinois. He is a nationally respected expert on Abraham Lincoln and the Reconstruction era.<\/p>\n

Sunday March 29, 4pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Deep Dive 4: From Red Shirts to Proud Boys, from the Klan to ICE, the modus operandi of racist autocracy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guest: Dr. Jennifer Taylor<\/a>.<\/strong> Dr. Taylor earned her PhD at USC, and is an Assistant Professor of Public History at Duquesne University. She specializes in debunking myths and telling true stories about our painful past. She addresses the tensions involved between the romanticized history told by the winners and the peoples\u2019 lived history. She offers best practices for interpreting issues such as white supremacy and domestic political terrorism for public audiences. Her recent book Rebirth: Creating the Museum of the Reconstruction Era and the Future of the House Museum,<\/i><\/a> tells how the Woodrow Wilson boyhood home in Columbia was upgraded for the 21st Century as the Museum of the Reconstruction Era. Rebirth<\/i> is available in hardback and paperback, as well as a free open access e-book through the University of South Carolina Press.<\/p>\n

You can view the recorded program HERE<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Monday, March 30, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 5<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 \u201cRedemption\u201d of white supremacy and The Constitution of 1895 rolls back the gains of Reconstruction.\u00a0<\/b>Just after the Civil War, whites in South Carolina saw their fortunes \u201credeemed\u201d through organized racist violence.<\/p>\n

Monday, April 6, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 6<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>\u2014\u00a0Jim Crow settles in, socialism rises, labor organizes, and resistance to war brings on a Red Scare.<\/b><\/p>\n

Guest:<\/strong> Dr. Kerry Taylor,<\/b> Citadel professor and noted labor historian.<\/p>\n

Sunday, April 12, 4pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

This screening has been postponed. New date TBA.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Deep Dive 5: Screening of the documentary Uprising of ’34, once banned in South Carolina.<\/strong><\/p>\n

How could such a pivotal moment in American history be kept a secret for 60 years? Textile workers recall with pride the long-supressed story of the General Textile Strike of 1934, when 500,000 Southern mill laborers walked off their jobs. George Stoney, Judith Helfand<\/strong> and Susanne Rostock<\/strong>\u2018s probing film explores how the strike still impacts labor, power and economics in the South today.<\/p>\n

The story of the great textile strike of 1934 goes a long way to explaining how South Carolina\u2019s working people are reflexively anti-union. Southern textile workers led the walkout of over a half-million workers at mills from New England to Georgia. New Deal legislation had strengthened workers\u2019 rights, and unions were becoming a force in the South. The strike of 1934 was brutally suppressed, nowhere more so than in Honea Path, SC, where seven workers were killed.<\/p>\n

Throughout the union, members were killed, and thousands more were blacklisted and intimidated. The story of the union uprising and the murders was so suppressed that grandchildren of the mill manager and mill workers who\u00a0 grew up in Honea Path never learned of the event until researchers interviewed them for a documentary about the strike in the early 1990s. In 1995, after six years of research and production, The Uprising of \u201834 was shown nationally on PBS \u2014 except in South Carolina. Fearing the anti-union wrath of legislators who control its budget, SC ETV declined to show the film. After complaints by the SC Progressive Network and others, SC ETV showed the film years later as a late-night offering.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Monday, April 13, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class\u00a07<\/b><\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0It can\u2019t happen here, can it?<\/b>\u00a0A fascist coup attempt of Wall Street and the continuing devolution of democracy.<\/p>\n

Monday, April\u00a020, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 8<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0South Carolina\u2019s militant human rights movement of the 1940s.<\/b><\/p>\n

Guest:<\/strong> Dr. Erik Gellman, UNC professor and author of <\/b>Death Blow to Jim Crow<\/i><\/b><\/a>,\u00a0<\/b>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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Monday, April\u00a027, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class\u00a09<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>\u2014 Separate and unequal; South Carolina\u2019s slow walk to integration<\/b>.\u00a0Dr. Robert Greene II<\/b>\u00a0will be joined by\u00a0Cecil Cahoon<\/b>, a 20-year Southern Regional Organizer for the National Education Association.<\/p>\n

Monday, May\u00a04<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 10\u00a0<\/b>\u2014 Losing hearts, minds, and empires. <\/b><\/p>\n

Guest: Brett Bursey, Network Director.<\/b>\u00a0The class will explore how more than a century of unbridled US imperialism was upended in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Monday, May\u00a011, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 11<\/b> <\/b>\u2013 Gender, Sex, Autonomy, and Intersectionality<\/b><\/p>\n

Guest:\u00a0<\/strong>Dr. Ed Madden<\/b><\/a> <\/b>will lead our discussion, offering a brief history and an analysis of what has been won \u2014 and lost.<\/p>\n

Monday, May\u00a018, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 12\u00a0<\/b>\u2014 Rise of the New Right and Left.<\/b>\u00a0When white supremacy and overt racism became socially unacceptable, the Christian right shifted their organizing tactics. So did the New Left.<\/p>\n

Monday, May 25, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Memorial\u00a0Day\u00a0\u2014 CLASS\u00a0WILL\u00a0NOT\u00a0MEET<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

June 1 Class 13 <\/b>\u2014 Founding Fathers v. Money and Power<\/b>. Ours is the world\u2019s only industrial democracy with a two-party system driven by corporate and monied interests. Let\u2019s talk how it happened with special guest\u00a0Greg Coleridge<\/a>, \u00a0former director of Move to Amend.<\/p>\n

Monday, June\u00a08, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class\u00a014\u00a0<\/b>\u2014\u00a0By What Authority, <\/b>is English for quo warranto, a legal phrase that questions illegitimate exercise of privilege and power. How did this nation turn from \u201cLife, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness\u201d to what Dr. King summarized as \u201cWar, Racism, and Poverty? What constitutional barriers are there to Dr. King\u2019s radical revolution of values?<\/p>\n

Monday, June\u00a015, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class 15\u00a0<\/b>\u2014\u00a0This is not what democracy looks like. <\/b>We\u2019ll review the state of South Carolina’s and the nation\u2019s electoral systems. Can our rigged system be fixed?<\/p>\n

Monday, June\u00a022, 6:30pm<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Class\u00a016\u00a0<\/b>\u2014\u00a0This is what democracy can look like. <\/b>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The spring semester runs from March 2 through June 22, with\u00a0classes meeting\u00a0on Mondays 6:30\u20138:30pm at GROW in Columbia and streamed live to students on Zoom and at satellite sites in<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-4158","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4158"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4343,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4158\/revisions\/4343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/modjeskaschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}