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Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina
In this pioneering study of the long and arduous struggle for civil rights in South Carolina, longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured―as well as the astonishing courage, devotion, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality.
Through extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred fifty civil rights activists, many of whom had never shared their stories with anyone, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, preaching, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins. Participants' use of nonviolent direct action altered the landscape of civil rights in South Carolina and reverberated throughout the South.
These firsthand accounts include those of the unsung petitioners who risked their lives by supporting Summerton's Briggs v. Elliot , a lawsuit that led to the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision; the thousands of students who were arrested and jailed in 1960 for protests in Rock Hill, Orangeburg, Denmark, Columbia, and Sumter; and the black female employees and leaders who defied a governor and his armed troops during the 1969 hospital strike in Charleston.
Brinson also highlights contributions made by remarkable but lesser-known activists, including James M. Hinton Sr., president of the South Carolina Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Thomas W. Gaither, Congress of Racial Equality field secretary and scout for the Freedom Rides; Charles F. McDew, a South Carolina State College student and co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and Mary Moultrie, grassroots leader of the 1969 hospital workers' strike.
These intimate stories of courage and conviction, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians' often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of these brave men and women produced real progress―and hope for the future.
Through extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred fifty civil rights activists, many of whom had never shared their stories with anyone, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, preaching, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins. Participants' use of nonviolent direct action altered the landscape of civil rights in South Carolina and reverberated throughout the South.
These firsthand accounts include those of the unsung petitioners who risked their lives by supporting Summerton's Briggs v. Elliot , a lawsuit that led to the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision; the thousands of students who were arrested and jailed in 1960 for protests in Rock Hill, Orangeburg, Denmark, Columbia, and Sumter; and the black female employees and leaders who defied a governor and his armed troops during the 1969 hospital strike in Charleston.
Brinson also highlights contributions made by remarkable but lesser-known activists, including James M. Hinton Sr., president of the South Carolina Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Thomas W. Gaither, Congress of Racial Equality field secretary and scout for the Freedom Rides; Charles F. McDew, a South Carolina State College student and co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and Mary Moultrie, grassroots leader of the 1969 hospital workers' strike.
These intimate stories of courage and conviction, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians' often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of these brave men and women produced real progress―and hope for the future.
- GenresHistory
376 pages, Hardcover
Published November 23, 2020
4 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
About the author
Claudia Smith Brinson
4 books1 followerEleven Tidbits
1. I was a military brat. I lived in 16 different places by the time I was twenty-two, four outside the continental United States.
2. I read constantly, voraciously, and beyond my years, in my room, on my stomach on my bed, with a cat on my back. A grandmother nicknamed me “Bookie.”
3. My mother and my military-base schoolteachers, the World War II generation, taught that women must marry, have children, and sublimate personal ambitions. My father objected to my mother working, which she did anyway, eventually, but he had ambitions for me, his firstborn. At the time 60 percent of women attending college dropped out to marry. While a third of women worked, very few pursued careers. I became determined to attend college, build a career, and support myself.
4. The high school of my junior and senior years offered a literary magazine, annual class newspapers, and a school newspaper. I worked at all and discovered another, bolder self when holding a pen and notepad. Suddenly I could ask just about anybody just about anything: I was a reporter!
5. When it came time for college, I discovered my father did not pay state taxes (illegal!), so we had no “state of legal residency.” I had never lived in South Carolina but convinced the dean of the law school at the University of South Carolina to grant me in-state fees because my father had entered World War II from USC. I had figured out I could then attend a journalism school I could afford, with the help of what were called National Student Defense Loans.
6. I emancipated myself ( became legally responsible for my own care) and worked my way through school, skipping meals and a winter coat. I earned a bachelor’s in journalism, a bachelor’s in English, and, a little later, a master’s in mass communication. I believe art and education save lives.
7. Sometimes I was the first to hold a job – the first woman assigned to the news desk, for example -- or to argue for coverage of and take a particular assignment – what was then called the gay and lesbian community, for example -- at the newspapers where I worked. Or to achieve a certain right – paid maternity leave with job retention, for example. When I studied journalism in the 1970s, women comprised 22 percent of newsroom journalists and were mostly confined to features and to women’s sections, tellingly called “soft news.” Minority journalists were so rare at white-owned newspapers that counts didn’t include them until the 1980s: 5.75 percent of newsroom journalists in 1984.
8. The peripatetic youth, an enduring desire for fairness, and an eye and ear for “the emperor has no clothes” made me an advocate for the people and stories ordinarily missing from news pages. I didn’t want the coveted Statehouse beat; I fought for and wrote stories about children, women, minorities, the elderly, the poor. I proposed and ran counts of how often women and minorities landed on the front page – and in what way. I organized conferences and served as a national writing coach. I annoyed many colleagues and most managers. Luckily, though, I also won prizes. When I left newspapers to teach full-time in 2006, women accounted for 37.7 percent of newsroom staff, minorities 13.87 percent.
9. As I sought the missing I found the heroic. These are the people who fill the pages of "Stories of Struggle." They filled me with admiration and love, and I could not live with the fear that their stories would die with them. I believe deeply in stories. We cannot truly know others if we do not know their stories. When only people in power tell the stories -- and tell them a certain way to maintain power -- the truth is missing.
10. I believe, as Marie Shear wrote in “New Directions for Women,”that “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” I believe, as Nell Irvin Painter instructs in "The History of White People," “Race is an idea, not a fact.”
11. I believe we are all the same, wishing for love
1. I was a military brat. I lived in 16 different places by the time I was twenty-two, four outside the continental United States.
2. I read constantly, voraciously, and beyond my years, in my room, on my stomach on my bed, with a cat on my back. A grandmother nicknamed me “Bookie.”
3. My mother and my military-base schoolteachers, the World War II generation, taught that women must marry, have children, and sublimate personal ambitions. My father objected to my mother working, which she did anyway, eventually, but he had ambitions for me, his firstborn. At the time 60 percent of women attending college dropped out to marry. While a third of women worked, very few pursued careers. I became determined to attend college, build a career, and support myself.
4. The high school of my junior and senior years offered a literary magazine, annual class newspapers, and a school newspaper. I worked at all and discovered another, bolder self when holding a pen and notepad. Suddenly I could ask just about anybody just about anything: I was a reporter!
5. When it came time for college, I discovered my father did not pay state taxes (illegal!), so we had no “state of legal residency.” I had never lived in South Carolina but convinced the dean of the law school at the University of South Carolina to grant me in-state fees because my father had entered World War II from USC. I had figured out I could then attend a journalism school I could afford, with the help of what were called National Student Defense Loans.
6. I emancipated myself ( became legally responsible for my own care) and worked my way through school, skipping meals and a winter coat. I earned a bachelor’s in journalism, a bachelor’s in English, and, a little later, a master’s in mass communication. I believe art and education save lives.
7. Sometimes I was the first to hold a job – the first woman assigned to the news desk, for example -- or to argue for coverage of and take a particular assignment – what was then called the gay and lesbian community, for example -- at the newspapers where I worked. Or to achieve a certain right – paid maternity leave with job retention, for example. When I studied journalism in the 1970s, women comprised 22 percent of newsroom journalists and were mostly confined to features and to women’s sections, tellingly called “soft news.” Minority journalists were so rare at white-owned newspapers that counts didn’t include them until the 1980s: 5.75 percent of newsroom journalists in 1984.
8. The peripatetic youth, an enduring desire for fairness, and an eye and ear for “the emperor has no clothes” made me an advocate for the people and stories ordinarily missing from news pages. I didn’t want the coveted Statehouse beat; I fought for and wrote stories about children, women, minorities, the elderly, the poor. I proposed and ran counts of how often women and minorities landed on the front page – and in what way. I organized conferences and served as a national writing coach. I annoyed many colleagues and most managers. Luckily, though, I also won prizes. When I left newspapers to teach full-time in 2006, women accounted for 37.7 percent of newsroom staff, minorities 13.87 percent.
9. As I sought the missing I found the heroic. These are the people who fill the pages of "Stories of Struggle." They filled me with admiration and love, and I could not live with the fear that their stories would die with them. I believe deeply in stories. We cannot truly know others if we do not know their stories. When only people in power tell the stories -- and tell them a certain way to maintain power -- the truth is missing.
10. I believe, as Marie Shear wrote in “New Directions for Women,”that “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” I believe, as Nell Irvin Painter instructs in "The History of White People," “Race is an idea, not a fact.”
11. I believe we are all the same, wishing for love
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 9, 2020
Would make for a great college textbook. Essential Civil Rights leaders from SC that are rarely talked about and known by only hardcore historians. Check out my full review here: https://www.richlandlibrary.com/blog/...
November 29, 2020
Wonderfully written tales of bravery battling injustice. This book tells the stories of everyday heroes that helped to get society where we are today. The author has finally given them the recognition they deserve in their efforts to pave the way for this generation. It's important to learn from the past to make a better future, there is still a lot to learn and a lot of work to be done.
November 22, 2020
Stories of Struggle shows us the great courage, determination, patience, and resolution of the people involved in the Civil Rights movement in South Carolina (and dispells the false notion that SC was somehow more "moderate" and "civilized" in its response). From the heroic actions of JE Hinton in attaining voting rights for Black citizens to the historic Briggs v Elliot case, this brings history to poignant life.
November 24, 2020
This is a must read for our country!
March 19, 2021
Fascinating stories that make you shake your head that you haven't heard them before. I think this should be required reading for all South Carolinians. It is well written with a very light editorial hand, letting the compelling actions of brave people largely speak for themselves. It really makes you appreciate the great sacrifices by so many people, some who chose to be leaders and some who were just everyday folk trying to make a living or make a better life for their children, and the extraordinary resistance they faced trying to secure the most basic of rights and public services we take for granted now. The chapters on schooling and the hospital strike are especially compelling.
April 10, 2021
A FORMER CO-WORKER OF MINE FROM THE STATE NEWSPAPER. I EXPECTED THE BEST AND SHE DELIVERED LIKE SHE ALWAYS HAD IN THE PAST FOR THE NEWSPAPER. TREMENDOUS RESEARCH AND DETAIL. I SOMETIMES GOT LOST WITH ALL THE NAMES THAT WERE INCLUDED IN EACH CHAPTER BUT I LEARNED ALOT ABOUT THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND THE PLACE THAT AN AMAZING GROUP OF SOUTH CAROLINIANS PLAYED ADVANCING THE CAUSE OF EQUAL RIGHTS.
May 18, 2024
I got this book after attending Brinson's lecture at the Greenville Museum. I was intrigued with her story in the first five minutes and knew I had to get her books. I am currently into reading about local/state history and this book fulfilled my hunger. It also gave me places to visit to see. I loved how she encourages the reader to add their story to fight for equality and justice.
I cannot wait to read her biography of Cecil J. Williams.
I cannot wait to read her biography of Cecil J. Williams.
January 16, 2021
Very thorough read if you are interested in SC segregation struggles. A little long winded but it covers several landscape changing crusades in SC in the 20th century and the people who made them occur.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews