Charleston Currents – civil rights

GOOD NEWS: Magnolia offers holiday food drive to help feed S.C. families

Staff reports | For the sixth consecutive year, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens is collecting food for the Lowcountry Food Bank, which serves 10 counties in coastal South Carolina. Since 2012 Magnolia’s guests have donated more than 15 tons of food that has benefited families in the food bank’s service area. The food drive began Nov. 1.

“I am challenging other tourism-related businesses like Magnolia to support food drives of their own to help needy families during the holiday season,” said Tom Johnson, executive director of the attraction.

Also in Good News: A new local beer; a new Living Your Truth talk, CYDC gets nod from state; law school rated highly; and two law firms make national list.

by Charleston Currents · 11/06/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs

Rev. Joseph A. De Laine Sr., center, sits next to Eleanor Roosevelt (in white) at a New York civil rights rally in 1955. Photo from the University

FOCUS, Elliott: Time to recognize De Laine with a monument

By Carl Elliott, republished with permission of the author | If you look closely at Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 school desegregation decision, you’ll see that Brown wasn’t a single case. It was five cases consolidated into one. Briggs v. Elliott, the first of them, took place in my home state, South Carolina.

Briggs came about after the Rev. Joseph De Laine organized a group of black parents in Clarendon County to petition for equal educational facilities. The man who stood fast against that request — the Elliott of Briggs v. Elliott — was the chairman of the school board, Roderick Miles Elliott. Or as he was known in my family, Uncle Roddy.

by Charleston Currents · 10/23/2017 · 1 comment · Focus, Good news

HISTORY: Bernice Robinson (1914-1994)

S.C. Encyclopedia | Educator and civil rights activist Bernice Violanthe Robinson was born in Charleston on February 7, 1914. Her father was a bricklayer, plasterer, and tile setter, which made the family financially independent. As such, Robinson’s parents discouraged their nine children from seeking jobs as domestic workers in white Charleston homes. Robinson grew to realize the value of education, a lesson that served her well. She married in the 1930s and had a daughter, Jacquelyn, but her husband left to find work and never returned. During the 1940s Robinson left Charleston for New York City with intentions of becoming a musician. Instead she worked in garment factories, as a beautician, and eventually as a civil servant. In New York she enjoyed the privilege of living in a nonsegregated community.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 10/03/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Esau Jenkins

S.C. Encyclopedia | Born on July 3, 1910, on Johns Island, Jenkins was the only child of Peter Jenkins and Eva Campbell. He was forced to end his formal education in the fourth grade to help supplement the family’s income. At age seventeen, he married Janie Jones. Of their thirteen children, seven survived, all of whom earned college degrees.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 09/26/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Marian Wright Edelman

S.C. Encyclopedia | Marian Wright Edelman was born on June 6, 1939, in Bennettsville, the daughter of the Baptist minister Arthur Jerome Wright and Maggie Leola Bowen. She graduated from Marlboro Training High School in 1956; from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1960; and from Yale Law School in 1963.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 07/17/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: Dr. Benjamin Mays

Civil rights activist, writer and college president Benjamin Elijah Mays was born on August 1, 1894, in rural South Carolina near Rambo in Edgefield County (now Epworth in Greenwood County).

by Charleston Currents · 05/11/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

Coretta Scott King (center) with strikers, Charleston, South Carolina, 1969, courtesy of the Avery Research Center. Left to right: Julia Davis, Mary Moultrie, Coretta Scott King, Rosetta Simmons, Juanita Abernathy, and Doris Turner. Photo from 1969 via the Avery Research Center at the
Lowcountry Digital History Initiative.

45 years ago: Charleston hospital workers’ strike

By George Hopkins | In Charleston in 1969, issues of race, class, and gender coalesced in a strike of more than 400 African American hospital workers, mostly female, against the all-white administrations of the Medical College Hospital (MCH) and Charleston County Hospital (CCH). The strike against MCH lasted 100 days during spring and summer; the one at CCH went on for an additional three weeks.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 01/21/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news, S.C. Encyclopedia

Lots of events ahead to remember King

There are several events over the next few days to celebrate and commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which will be observed Jan. 19. Here is a list of events ahead for Charleston’s observance, considered the state’s largest tribute to the slain civil rights leader.

by Charleston Currents · 01/12/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs