When you find the phrase “civil rights movement”, what comes to mind?
For many people, it is the 1960s. Demonstrations, fire hoses, marches and voter registration campaigns. But the civil rights movement is much bigger than that. This can be traced back to the first time that an enslaved person has refused their slavery.
The civil rights movement necessarily includes all examples of organized black self-determination, from kneeling in prayer on the church pews to kneeling on the sides of the stadium.
The period of 1954, when the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board declared segregation unconstitutional until 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, can be considered the iconic period of the movement. During these tumultuous years, activists sought to end legal segregation and gain access to the country’s institutions.
In South Carolina, it was the decade after World War II when the civil rights movement made significant gains – when the NAACP brought case after case to the courts, when journalist John McCray blew the trumpet in The Lighthouse and Informer, when Avery Institute of African American History and Culture was founded.
That was when black activists like Esau Jenkins and Septima Clark and Modjeska Simkins and Rev. Joseph Armstrong De Laine refused the status quo.
Today, the civil rights movement continues in South Carolina. African-American leaders across the state, working in a variety of sectors, are making a difference, whether by raising their voices on the streets or directing the needy on a new productive path.
This year, The Post and Courier marks Black History Month with a special detachable section that recognizes 12 of these notable people and dwells a little on the action-packed past. Read their stories in today’s newspaper and go to postandcourier.com/BlackHistory to watch video interviews or access our podcast. We will publish a new video every month until January 2022, as these are the people who are making history now.