Just over the top of the front roof of this abandoned house in Summerton, S.C., you can see the American flag waving at the historic Scott’s Branch school. The Clarendon County school sits on the site that saw the start of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education education case in South Carolina.
Way back in 1947, the NAACP agreed to sponsor a federal case after black parents sued for inferior conditions in the Clarendon County schools. In short, they wanted money to help pay for gas for a secondhand bus provided by the county. The case, Briggs v. Elliott, became the “first case filed, tried and appealed to the Supreme Court challenging segregation in public schools,” according to a 2011 National Law Journal article by Leon Friedman and U.S. District Judge Richard M. Gergel. The article is a tribute to the courage of the late U.S. District Judge Waties Waring, whose historic dissent sent the Briggs case to the high court.
These days, the historic Scott’s Branch school has been recovered with a bright blue metal roof. It is used these days as a community resource center.
Summerton has about 1,000 people. Clarendon County has 34,357 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 population estimate. About half of the county’s residence are white; the other half are black. Some other statistics:
- High school graduation rate of those 25 or older: 76.3 percent.
- Bachelor’s degree graduates: 13.8 percent
- Median household income: $33,267
- Poverty rate: 22.8 percent
- Unemployment rate, November 2013: 9.9 percent (2.5 percent higher than the state average)
- Black-owned firms: 30.1 percent (18 points higher than state average)
- Women-owned firms: 35.4 percent (8 points higher than state average)
Copyrighted photo by Andy Brack, Dec. 5, 2013. All rights reserved.