On May 17, the SC Civil Rights Museum in Orangeburg hosted a program to explore Briggs v Elliott‘s role — and historical snub — in the landmark Brown v Board case.

USC’s Dr. Bobby Donaldson moderated the panel: Cecil Williams, noted photographer and force behind the museum, and civil rights activist Nathaniel Briggs, a descendant of Harry Briggs Sr.

After the program, attendees loaded a bus for a tour of the museum’s new building now under construction. It is ideally located next to two HBCUs, Claflin and SC State.

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The Modjeska Simkins School will hold a Deep Dive Sunday at 4pm with nationally renowned civil rights attorney Armand Derfner, who will talk about the US Supreme Court’s sytemic betrayal of civil rights and how that history informs this moment. 

Join online or in-person at GROW, 1340 Elmwood Ave. in Columbia. To participate on Zoom, register HERE.

Derfner helped shape the Voting Rights Act in numerous Supreme Court arguments, and worked on desegregating state university systems and state legislatures across the South. He co-authored the new book Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court with distinguished historian Dr. Vernon Burton. 

Derfner’s personal story is extraordinary. His Jewish parents fled Poland to Paris, where Armand was born in 1938. He was just two years old when the Nazis marched into Paris, forcing the family to flee again. They managed to get to New York, where Derfner spent most of his youth. He graduated from Princeton and Yale, and went to work for a big law firm. 

In the summer of 1965, Derfner took time off to volunteer in Mississippi during a time of extreme racial violence — and ended up staying in the South. He moved to Charleston in 1969, and has now been practicing civil rights law for nearly 60 years.

For more about Derfner and his legal work, check out these links:

The Post and Courier May 30, 2024: Good Faith? Not in the SC Legislature and not on the US Supreme Court

Champions of SC Civil and Human Rights, oral history, July 2, 2007: Voting Rights Before the United States Supreme Court

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Our Deep Dive series is part of the Modjeska Simkins School’s spring program. The School was launched in 2015 as a project of the SC Progressive Network. To support the school, you can donate HERE. Contributions help provide stipends for guest speakers and scholarships for students across the state.

Did you know that 153 years before our current president was indicted for inciting an insurrection, another US president used the Insurrection Clause to track and arrest hundreds of white terrorists in South Carolina? It was news to us, too.

Historian Fergus Bordewich will talk about that and other material in his latest book, Klan War, at a program on Sunday, March 30, at 4pm on Zoom and in-person at  GROW, 1340 Elmwood Ave. in Columbia.

The program is part of the spring session of the Modjeska Simkins School, a project the SC Progressive Network launched in 2015. The school’s Deep Dive series is free and open to the public. Online participants must register HERE.

Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction is touted by Knopf as “a stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil.”

Jennifer Szalai of The New York Times called the book a “cautionary tale,” warning that, “a premature push for conciliation and compromise can leave the roots of some very old pathologies untouched, ready to grow again when the conditions are right.”

After the Civil War ended, the 14th Amendment was passed to grant and defend equal rights to formerly enslaved people. As soon as the war ended, the Ku Klux Klan organized to terrorize them — depriving them of the rights afforded to all citizens through the 14th Amendment.

Nowhere in the country was the mayhem and murder more widespread than in South Carolina, the “cradle of secession.” In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant declared martial law in nine South Carolina counties, and hundreds of KKK members were arrested.  The trials were held in Columbia and Charleston.

“My book is one of history, not present-day politics,” Borderwich said, “but a few conclusions are inescapable. The United States is not so exceptional that it is somehow absolved from the potential for organized terrorist violence of the type we have seen in other countries. 

“The story of Reconstruction and the Klan war further demonstrates that rights that we take for granted — as freedmen did in the 1870s — can be taken away again. There are forces in today’s America that have the potential to undermine our most basic democratic processes and institutions, as we saw on January 6, 2021. We must remain vigilant if we are not to let our democracy slip through our fingers.”

Bordewich will appear in-person at GROW. His books will be available for purchase.

On Sunday, March 23, the Modjeska Simkins School will host a program to explore the intersection of Black history, slavery, and American capitalism with national expert University of Virginia professor Dr. Justene Hill Edwards.

The program is free and open to the public. Participants may join on Zoom or in-person at GROW in Columbia.

Dr. Hill Edwards’ latest book, Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank, examines the relationship between democracy and capitalism during the Reconstruction era. The Freedman’s Bank served tens of thousands of recently emancipated African Americans, many of them making deposits in the Freedman’s banks in Charleston and Beaufort.

Why and how did it fail, and what are the lessons it can teach us today?

Recent research on racial and economic inequality in the United States has led to policy discussions that have placed blame on issues such as access to affordable credit and redlining. Hill Edwards argues that we cannot fully understand why economic inequality persists by looking to modern American history for answers. 

Hill Edwards’ books — Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (2021) and Savings and Trust (2024) consider the role of the federal government and America’s banking industry in furthering economic inequality at the end of slavery in 1865. The books show that the vestiges of race-based economic inequality are not in the late-nineteenth or twentieth centuries, but in the period of legal slavery.

Sunday’s program is part of the Modjeska School’s Deeper Dive series, which is a supplement for the students, who are currently studying the antebellum era, Civil War, and Reconstruction.

“We are pleased to be able to bring Dr. Hill Edwards back to the school this session,” said Network Executive Director Brett Bursey. “Her research helps reveal how our state’s minimally adequate education — and the escalating legislative assault on teaching truth — continue to serve the interest of the monied gentry.”

The program will be held 4-6pm on Zoom and in-person at the SC Progressive’s HQ at 1340 Elmwood Ave. in Columbia. To join online, register HERE.

Cecil Rigby, 2023 Modjeska Simkins School graduate

Just as Modjeska Simkins School students learn about South Carolina’s indigenous peoples’ struggles for just treatment, we see them take yet another hit courtesy of the Trump Administration.

In 2022, the Biden Administration started the “Local Food Purchase Assistance” program, a cooperative agreement between the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service and the South Carolina Department of Agriculture (SCDA) that resulted in the Catawba Nation receiving $6.1 million in LFPA funds. SCDA was responsible for administering $4.7 million of that total.  

Using these federal funds, SCDA contracted with aggregators to buy food from local, socially disadvantaged producers to distribute free to underserved populations in the state.

Under new orders, that program is now terminated.

USDA states “The intent of the program is to target Socially Disadvantaged. For the purpose of this program, “socially disadvantaged” is a farmer or rancher who is a member of a Socially Disadvantaged Group. A Socially Disadvantaged Group is a group whose members have been subject to discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and, where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or a part of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program. While purchasing from socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers is not a requirement, it is a target. Proposals should include the steps the applicant will take to target this population.”

USDA notified states on Friday that it was unfreezing funds for existing LFPA agreements but did not plan to carry out a second round of funding for fiscal year 2025.

Until now, LFPA food was distributed in 24 South Carolina underserved counties — more than half. Those counties were identified based on their unemployment, poverty rates, rural classification, remote classification, and current distribution of food. They include: Abbeville, Aiken, Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Cherokee, Clarendon, Colleton, Dillon, Edgefield, Georgetown, Greenwood, Hampton, Horry, Jasper, Lee, Marion, Marlboro, McCormick, Oconee, Orangeburg, Pickens, Union, and Williamsburg counties. 

All 24 counties have expansive food deserts. Unfortunately, things are about to be worse for people in these areas.

The Catawba Nation’s efforts to provide healthy food to its citizens include Black Snake Farm, a 22-acre farm made possible through the LFPA’s “Plus” program during the pandemic. The grant from USDA was to provide enough funding to purchase food for the market until December 2026. 

The farm works to grow healthy and fresh food that can go into tribal households throughout the year. They “hope that in the future this farm can feed Catawba families and serve as a source for easily accessible food.”

Statewide, SCDA agreements under this and similar programs were expected “to impact over 800,000 students at 124 School Food Authorities. Of this total, SCDA estimated that at least 213 thousand students in underserved areas” would receive increased access to local foods.

Why would anyone expect any attempts to receive reparations for past injustices have any chance to succeed when such a wealthy nation as ours withdraws basic assistance like this from its most deserving citizens?  

Attempts and hopes to build community economics that are decoupled from exploitative systems of production and trade are being smothered in the crib yet again.

The Modjeska Simkins School for Human Rights has opened enrollment for its spring session, marking the school’s 10th year of teaching civics, organizing strategies, and a people’s history of South Carolina to students of all ages and backgrounds. In this age of book bans and challenges to historical narratives, its role is more critical than ever.

The 2025 session runs March 3 – June 23, with classes meeting Monday evenings online and in-person at GROW in Columbia.

This year, the school is partnering with Penn Center in St. Helena, which will be operating a satellite classroom from its campus for students in the area to attend the session live.

“It is an honor to partner with such an historic institution,” said Brett Bursey, executive director of the SC Progressive Network, the nonprofit that launched the school in 2015. “We hope this will become a model for collaborating with allied groups across South Carolina.”

This is a full-circle moment for the Network, which held its first organizing meeting at Penn Center in 1996 and has returned there over the years for its statewide conferences. The campus has a unique and storied history, beginning in 1862 as a school for freed people and later serving as an organizing hub during the modern civil rights movement, where luminaries such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. met to map strategy.

“The Penn Center’s partnership with the Modjeska Simkins School continues Penn’s enduring legacy of providing educational and self-empowerment opportunities for the Carolina Lowcountry,” said Dr. Robert L. Adams, the Center’s executive director. “Informed citizens, who are the cornerstone of American democracy, are nurtured by the rich intellectual experience and critical thinking skills offered by the Modjeska Simkins School. We are proud to extend the reach of such an important program.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Penn Center with SCLC staff in 1966 

Bursey said, “We welcome anyone interested in understanding and better navigating our state’s social and political landscape. Whether you are a lover of history, an activist seeking ways to be more effective in your work, a retired person wanting to get involved in your community, or a transplant who wants to know the peculiar history of South Carolina, this course will benefit you.”

Dr. Robert Greene II, a professor of history at Claflin University who has served as the Modjeska School’s lead instructor since 2019, said, “The school remains a bulwark for truth against disinformation. At the Modjeska School, we believe in not only learning history for the sake of knowing our past, but learning how to think critically and how to think democratically. Contrary to popular belief, there is a tradition of human rights—exemplified by Modjeska Simkins herself—in South Carolina.”

Dr. Robert Greene II speaks at a Jan. 25 celebration of the school’s 10th anniversary

The curriculum, reflecting the Network’s state-based strategy, focuses on South Carolina, which continues to play an over-sized role in our nation’s politics. The course material is ever-evolving to include the latest research and historical analyses. There is nothing like it, not just in South Carolina but nationally.

As a service to the larger community, the school also offers Deep Dive programs on Sunday afternoons during the session that are free and open to the public.

The course includes 16 evening classes, Sunday afternoon Deep Dives, and in-depth study guides. Tuition is based on a sliding scale, and limited full scholarships are available.

Classes meet Monday evenings on Zoom and in-person at GROW, 1340 Elmwood Ave. in Columbia.

For details about the school, the 2025 class schedule, or to apply, click HERE.

Here are comments from some of last year’s students.

• Josh Dunn

• Nilanka Seneviratne 

• Tayler Simon