Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina During the Twentieth Century

Front Cover
Winfred B. Moore, Orville Vernon Burton
Univ of South Carolina Press, 2008 - History - 470 pages
Toward the Meeting of the Waters brings together voices of leading historians alongside recollections from central participants to provide the first comprehensive history of the civil rights movement as experienced by black and white South Carolinians. The volumes opening section assesses the transition of South Carolina leaders from defiance to moderate enforcement of federally mandated integration and includes commentary by former governor and U.S. senator Ernest F. Hollings and former governor John C. West. The next sections recall defining moments of white-on-black violence and aggression to set the context for understanding the efforts of reformers such as Levi G. Byrd and Septima Poinsette Clark and for interpreting key episodes of white resistance. The next section forms an oral history of the era as it was experienced by a mixture of locally and nationally recognized participants, including historians such as John Hope Franklin and Tony Badger as well as civil rights activists Joseph A. De Laine Jr., Beatrice Brown Rivers, Charles McDew, Constance Curry, Matthew J. Perry Jr., Harvey B. Gantt, and Cleveland Sellers Jr. The volume concludes with essays by historians who bring this story to the present day.
 

Contents

Comments
22
Questions and Answers
29
Part 2Aggressors
37
White and Black Anticipations
50
The Lowman Lynchings of 1926
65
State Law Government and Citizen
93
When the Ku Klux Klan Tried to Kill Rhythm
119
Part 3Reformers
143
The Desegregation of Clemson
274
Memory History and the Desegregation of Greenville
286
The African American Struggle
300
Retrospectives
317
Questions and Answers
330
Voices from the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina
337
The Orangeburg Massacre
359
Orangeburg 19682003
373

The Impact of 1940s Civil Rights Activism on the States 1960s Civil Rights
156
The Briggs v Elliott School Segregation Case
176
Freedom Riding in the Carolinas
201
The Developmental Leadership of Septima Clark 19541967
222
Part 4Resisters
239
Could History Repeat Itself? The Prospects for a Second Reconstruction
252
The White Citizens Councils of Orangeburg County South Carolina
261
Part 6
380
The Perspective
402
How Far We Have ComeHow Far We Still Have to Go
422
Orangeburg Let Us Heal Ourselves
433
Contributors
441
Index
447
Copyright

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