About the Project Authors 

Millicent E. Brown is a retired professor of U.S. History. Brown taught at the Bennett College for Women, Guilford College, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and most recently at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Her scholarly work focuses on nineteenth and twentieth century U.S. history, with an emphasis on the twentieth century civil rights movement. She has served as the project director of Somebody Had To Do It since 2008. Brown currently resides in her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, and works on various projects with the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture. Her latest publication includes “The NAACP Years: Newman as South Carolina Field Director” in The Spirit of an Activist: The Life and Work of I. DeQuincey Newman (edited by Sadye L. M. Logan) with the University of South Carolina Press, 2014. She also consults on issues related to social and human justice transformation through her agency, Lightbright, LLC.

Jon Hale is an assistant professor of educational history at the College of Charleston, where he teaches the Foundations of Education, the History of Education, and the History of the Civil Rights Movement, in addition to other courses in the graduate school. His research focuses on the use of education among activists during the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. Selective current and forthcoming publications include: The Freedom Schools: A History of Student Activists on the Frontlines of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (forthcoming with Columbia University Press), The Freedom School Newspapers: Writings, Essays and Reports from Student Activists During the Civil Rights Movement (co-edited with William Sturkey) with the University Press of Mississippi, “‘The Fight Was Instilled in Us’: High School Student Activism and the Civil Rights Movement in Charleston, South Carolina,” The South Carolina Historical Magazine, and “The Struggle Begins Early: Head Start and the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” The History of Education Quarterly 52, no. 4 (November, 2012); 506-534.

Clerc Cooper is a senior undergraduate student at the College of Charleston with a double major in History and African American Studies and a minor in Sociology. Her research interests include public and Catholic school desegregation in Charleston and New Orleans, the latter of which is the topic of her Honors Bachelors Essay. She plans to begin law school in the Fall of 2015.

Editorial Contributors

• Scott Baker, Wake Forest University
  Vernon Burton, Clemson University
  Daron Lee Calhoun II, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston
  Paula Quick Hall, Co-Founder of African American Education and Research Organization (AAERO)
  Henrie Monteith Treadwell, Morehouse School of Medicine, desegregated the University of South Carolina
  Emily M. DeQuincey-Newman, desegregated Frank C. Withers Elementary School in Columbia, South Carolina

Sources

Baker, R. Scott. Paradoxes of Desegregation: African American Struggles for Educational Equity in Charleston, South Carolina, 1926-1972. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2006.

“Boarder States Yielding to Pressure but Deep South Can Win Race Battle.” News and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina), September 14, 1956.

Burton, Orville Vernon, Beatrice Burton, and Simon Appleford. “Seeds in Unlikely Soil: The Briggs v. Elliot School Segregation Case.” In Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina during the Twentieth Century, edited by Winifred B. Moore Jr. and Orville Vernon Burton, 191. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2008.

Charron, Katherine Mellon. Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

“City’s Newest School, East Bay Negro Elementary, To Open Monday” The News and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina) February 1, 1955.

Constituent District #20, Board Minutes, 1958-1978, Reel 212, Charleston County School District, North Charleston, South Carolina.

Crespino, Joseph. Strom Thurmond’s America. New York, New York: Hill and Wang, 2012.

“Disorder at Mixing Tennessee School is a sample of Rebellion to Come.” News and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina), August 31, 1956.

Dobrasko, Rebekah. “Architectural Survey of Charleston County’s School Equalization Program, 1951-1955.” University of South Carolina: Public History Program, April 2005.

Edgar, Walter B.  South Carolina in the Modern Age. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1992.

Fancher, Betsy. “Voices From the South: Black Students Talk About Their Experiences in Desegregated Schools.” Southern Regional Council, Inc., August, 1970. 

Fisher, Carson. “Media Coverage of the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina, From the Freedom Rides to the Orangeburg Massacre, 1961-1968.” Bachelors Essay, College of Charleston, 2014.

Hawkins, J. Russell. “Religion, Race, and Resistance: Evangelicals and the Dilemma of Integration in South Carolina 1950-175.” Ph.D. diss., Rice University, 2009.

Jenkins, Katherine. “Desegregation Not Integration: Charleston County Schools and the Struggle Over Consolidation, 1963-1980.” MA thesis, College of Charleston, 2009.

Morrison, Nan. A History of the College of Charleston, 1936-2008. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2011.

“Negro Children Denied Admission.” News and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina), October 11, 1960.

Petition, Board of Trustee Minute Book, 1951-1957, School District No. 20, Charleston County School District, North Charleston, South Carolina.

Smyth, William D. “Segregation in Charleston in the 1950s: A Decade of Transition.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 92, April 1991.

Statement of Governor James F. Byrnes,  July 22, 1952. In the James F. Byrnes Papers, Series 7, Box 12, Folders 1-13, Strom Thurmond Institute archives, Clemson University.

“The Southern Resistance.” News and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina), August 24, 1955.

To the School Boards of School District #20. In the Eugene C. Hunt Papers, 1890-1995, Box 7, Folder 8, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Charleston, South Carolina.

Yarbrough, Tinsley E. A Passion for Justice: J. Waties Waring and Civil Rights. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Oral Histories

This online exhibition features select excerpts of oral history interviews conducted by the Somebody Had To Do It team with first children in South Carolina and beyond. The College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center Archives holds the Somebody Had To Do It collection of over forty interviews conducted by this team starting in 2006. Over time, additional interviews from this collection will be transcribed and uploaded into the Lowcountry Digital Library, and highlighted in this online exhibition through video clips and the interactive map.

Adams, Theodore. Interviewed by Kenneth Cooper, April 8, 2009. Somebody Had to Do It Collection, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston.

Brown, Millicent E. Interviewed by Vanessa Jackson, c. 2005. Somebody Had to Do It Collection, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston.

Carter, Ruth. Constance Curry and Chea Prince, July 14, 2008. Somebody Had to Do It Collection, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston.

Harvin, Emma. Interviewed by Millicent E. Brown, October 15, 2009. Somebody Had to Do It Collection, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston.