Abstract
When the South Carolina legislature created the anti-NAACP oath in 1956, teachers across the state lost their positions. But it was the dismissal of twenty-one teachers at the Elloree Training School that captured the attention of the NAACP and Black media outlets. In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, South Carolina's Black and White communities went head-to-head in the battle over White supremacy versus expanded civil rights. The desegregation movement in 1955 and 1956 placed Black teachers’ activism in the spotlight—activism that mirrored what was happening in their community. This largely unknown episode of civil rights activism demonstrates that Black teachers were willing to serve not only as behind-the-scenes supporters in the equal education struggle but as frontline activists. Furthermore, it shows that South Carolina was an integral site of the long civil rights movement.
Highlights
When the South Carolina legislature created the anti-NAACP oath in 1956, teachers across the state lost their positions
Most local African Americans demonstrated a serious commitment to seeing school desegregation through to the end, but the Council’s members, who South Carolina NAACP president James Hinton pronounced were “acting like jackasses,” were sometimes successful
According to Solomon, the South Carolina legislation was passed in order to “make sure no teachers join [the] NAACP.”66 Roy Wilkins, NAACP executive secretary, and Hinton denounced the new law as an effort to “intimidate teachers as they are the only large group of public employees from which the
Summary
When the South Carolina legislature created the anti-NAACP oath in 1956, teachers across the state lost their positions. The desegregation movement in 1955 and 1956 placed Black teachers’ activism in the spotlight—activism that mirrored what was happening in their community This largely unknown episode of civil rights activism demonstrates that Black teachers were willing to serve as behind-the-scenes supporters in the equal education struggle but as frontline activists. When the twenty-one Black teachers refused to distance themselves from the leading civil rights organization or to endorse prevailing segregationist practices, White school officials refused to rehire them for the upcoming school year.5 The Elloree teachers’ case has not been a central focus in previous historical scholarship, numerous preeminent scholars have mentioned it in their research.7 Historians such as Adam Fairclough and Vanessa Siddle Walker have positioned Black teachers as community leaders whose work was politicized because it challenged White supremacy..
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