A History of Burke High School in Charleston, South Carolina since 1894

Exhibit Splash Image

Sources

About the Project Author
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. Current and forthcoming publications include 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.

Editorial Contributors
Scott Baker, University of Oregon
Millicent Brown, Claflin University
Sherman Pyatt, Charleston County Public Library

Additional Credits
Special thanks to the Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston for use of the "Dart Family Papers, 1844-1945." The majority of the documents in the Dart Family Papers collection at Avery detail the history of Burke Industrial School from its origins to the present day. The collection of Parvenue papers at Avery provided additional information on the student activism present throughout Burke's history.

Sources

Anderson, James. Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: the University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

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.

-------. “Pedagogies of Protest: African American Teachers and the History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1940-1963,” Teachers College Record 112 (December 2012), 2777-2803.

Brown, Millicent Brown. “Civil Rights Activism in Charleston, 1940-1970.” Ph.D., unpublished dissertation, University of Florida.

Burke High School Students. Who is Burke High?: The History of the Burke High School Family. Charleston, South Carolina: South Carolina Humanities Society, 2010.

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

Courrégé, Diette. “Participants Remember April 1, 1960, sit-in by Burke High Student.” Post and Courier, April 1, 2012.

Drago, Edmund L. Initiative, Paternalism, and Race Relations: Charleston’s Avery Normal Institute. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1990.

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

Moore Jr. Winfred B. and Orville Vernon Burton, eds. Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina during the Twentieth Century. Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008. 

Powers, Bernard. Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885. Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1994.

Pyatt, Sherman E. Burke High School, 1894-2006. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2007.

Siddle Walker, Vanessa. Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Simms, Lois Averetta. A Chalk and Chalkboard Career in Carolina. New York, New York: Vantage Press, 1995.

Smyth, William D. “Segregation in Charleston in the 1950s: A Decade of Transition,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, 92, no. 2 (April, 1991).

Primary Source Collections related to the History of Burke High School

Avery Normal Institute Collection, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Charleston, South Carolina.

Avery Photograph Collection, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Charleston, South Carolina.

J. Arthur Brown Collection, 1948-1955, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Charleston, South Carolina.

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

Dart Family Papers, 1844-1945, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Charleston, South Carolina.

Eugene C. Hunt Papers, 1890-1995, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Charleston, South Carolina.

Lois A. Simms Papers, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Charleston, South Carolina.

Millicent E. Brown Papers, 1949-2003, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Charleston, South Carolina.

Links

School Equalization project, Rebekah Dobrasko 
http://www.scequalizationschools.org

Integration at Clemson: A Legacy of Inclusion
http://www.clemson.edu/oirweb1/FB/factbook/Historical_Enrollment/Integration.htm

South Carolina African Americans - Historically Black Schools and Libraries
http://www.sciway.net/afam/sc-historically-black-schools.html

Library of Congress - Brown v. Board at Fifty: "With an Even Hand"
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-segregation.html