Dr. Robert Greene II, who teaches history at Claflin and is the lead instructor for Modjeska Simkins School, awards Bernadette Hampton her certificate at last year’s graduation ceremony in Columbia.
The Modjeska Simkins School, now in its 11th year of teaching civics and a true history of South Carolina, invites public school teachers to attend the spring session free of charge. Orientation is Feb. 28, with hybrid classes meeting Monday evenings between March 2 and June 22. Students may participate on Zoom, in-person in Columbia, or at one of five satellite sites, in Charleston, Lancaster, Orangeburg, Pendleton, Penn Center, and Sumter.
Below are messages from two champions of public education, Bernadette Hampton and Cecil Cahoon.
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Cecil Cahoon
SC Progressive Network Board of Directors, former English/Language Arts teacher, North Carolina Public Schools
George Orwell reportedly said, “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
As we approach the 250th anniversary of America’s founding by revolutionaries, South Carolina’s students need and deserve to hear and learn more truth, not less. There are no better transmitters of truth to our students than South Carolina’s public school teachers, which is why the school is offering free resources and scholarships to teachers.
Guided by the example of our own civil rights icon Modjeska Monteith Simkins, the SC Progressive Network publishes unvarnished truth in its booklets on heroes, heroines, and defining events in the people’s history of our state. It teaches the same truth through the annual Modjeska Simkins School for Human Rights, a series of master classes in history and applied democracy that are taught by nationally-renowned historians, authors, attorneys, advocates, and other modern-day revolutionaries.
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Bernadette Hampton
Beaufort County school teacher and former President of the SC Education Association
The Modjeska Simkins School taught me that heroes like Robert Smalls and other Black legislators during Reconstruction wrote a new state Constitution in 1868 that — for the first and last time — guaranteed equal, public education to every child in South Carolina.
Today’s Jim Crow Constitution of 1895 has been amended to offer “minimally adequate education.” Sadly, the quality of that education is not equal but rather dictated by a child’s zip code. I learned that South Carolina prevented slavery from being banned in the US Constitution, and that our state ensured that enslaved thousands counted as two-thirds of a human being so that slave states would retain more power in Congress.
I strongly encourage teachers — especially retirees— to take advantage of the opportunity to attend the spring session of the school, which is waiving the $500 tuition for all public school educators.
See modjeskaschool.com for details or to apply.