So Popular!

Guess who else made it in the news? Rebekah Dobrasko from the State Historic Preservation Office, in an article about mid-century school construction in response to "separate but equal". Props to Rebekah, too!

The State article is here: Segregation Spurred SC School Building Spree.

Building Great Schools (For All the Wrong Reasons)

Sung to the tune of Johnny Lee’s Country classic “Looking for Love”

Pop Quiz: Which Southern state passed its first sales tax (3%) and spent $124 million dollars on new schools and buses between 1951 and 1956 with the expressed purpose of keeping the state’s children segregated?

A. Georgia
B. Mississippi
C. South Carolina
D. Maryland
E. All of the above

If you answered C, you are correct. If you answered A or B, you get partial credit, since Georgia and Mississippi enacted similar programs. If you answered D, you, like many of that state’s residents, are under the delusion that Maryland is still considered a “Southern” state.

In 1951 South Carolina passed its first general sales tax in order to fund a statewide program of school construction in response to Briggs v. Elliott, a lawsuit based in Clarendon County, which challenged the state’s constitutional “separate but equal” education provision. This “equalization” program was intended to construct new African American elementary and high schools across South Carolina to circumvent a potential desegregation ruling by the Supreme Court. The multi-million dollar school building campaign utilized modern school design, materials, and architecture to build new rural, urban, black, and white schools in communities throughout the state.

SCDAH staffer Rebekah Dobrasko has done an outstanding job of documenting this fascinating, bizarre, shameful, and yet beneficial period in our state’s history through her research and the creation of a website entitled South Carolina’s Equalization Schools, 1951-1960 at http://scequalization.schools.officelive.com. The site is an example of the stimulating research being conducted by members of our busy and intellectually curious staff. Take a look at the website; you won’t be disappointed.

Hope Springs Eternal

Or at least for a good while longer. Congratulations to the Hope School Community Center!

The Hope School Community Center is the name of a Rosenwald School located in rural Newberry County near Pomaria. This little gem of a building was named for the local family who donated the land upon which it was built. It also represented the hope for a better future of the African American children who attended this two-room school from 1925-1954.

And on Saturday August 22, 2009, “hope” captured the feeling of the many guests who gathered in the recently renovated building to celebrate its new life as a community center. Guests marveled at the natural sunlight flooding through the windows, the freshly painted walls and ceiling, the well-worn but newly shined wood floors, the beautifully restored metal roof. Folks in their 60s, 70s and beyond, told stories of what it was like to attend school in this sturdy building, of the miles walked each day, the fires built on cold mornings, of the discipline and love of their teachers.


The restoration process is a remarkable story of many folks coming together – alumni, children of alums, descendants of the Hopes, students at Clemson, and many others—to make the vision of a restored school possible. And it is through their generosity in donating original school desks and a pot belly stove, the school sign, and oral history interviews to the Smithsonian, that future visitors to the National Museum of African American History & Culture, will learn about and share in this hope as well.



To read more about the Hope School Community Center go to http://www.hopeschoolcenter.org/.
For more information about Rosenwald Schools in South Carolina go to http://www.state.sc.us/scdah/afamer/hprosenwald.htm
For more information about the national Rosenwald School Initiative go to http://www.preservationnation.org/travel-and-sites/sites/southern-region/rosenwald-schools/