several in the group, especially since a readily available and often used group photograph exists of this first group of Black students. Glover asserts: “not only can they not fix the missteps regarding the calendar, but they also can’t remedy a lifetime of inflicted damage whose repercussions endure.” The numerous insults go beyond representation in the calendar.
We believe it impossible for the department to simultaneously “honor” plaintiffs of this groundbreaking case in the 2024 calendar (which is designed to address the exclusion of Black South Carolinians from school curricula and texts) while at the same time supporting the removal of books and topics that seek to teach an accurate accounting of systemic racial injustices put upon Black people in the state.
Specifically, the State Department of Education under the leadership of Superintendent Ellen Weaver, has made it clear through public statements and recently crafted policies that restriction of marginalized groups and academically neglected/narrowly interpreted topics will continue to limit what must be confronted about our state (and national) history regarding injustice and dehumanization.
We, the surviving plaintiffs, feel that in the handling of the 2024 calendar (far inferior to earlier editions that were better organized and presented) Superintendent Weaver’s administration is an ongoing “slap in the face” with its inconsistency of word and deed. The department is falsely proclaiming with this calendar its enlightened view of the struggle for equal rights and access when in fact, this administration makes a mockery of the changes eleven young people stood for in 1963 and thereafter. Glover steadfastly refuses, supported by the others, “to step back and silently witness the regression of the public school system to a sixties era status.”
The legal challenge of the students in Charleston, followed by other Black students across the state over the next several years, deserves to be commemorated as an example of how resistant South Carolina’s political structure was to equality and justice, not blindly celebrated as a victory over discrimination, as that victory has yet to come. We will not let recognition of the sacrifices of young people in the past be confused with the ongoing assaults of today that continue to slow down the changes that ultimately need to come. Under another administration demonstrating a more progressive philosophy towards differences of all kinds, we will look to being properly recognized for our efforts in 1963 and our ongoing, individual and collective commitment to fairness. The SC Department of Education cannot have it both ways.
Millicent E. Brown, Ph.D. is the author of Another Sojourner Looking for Truth (forthcoming 2024, USC Press). She is also a Social Justice and Public History Consultant.
