Research Catalog

The slow undoing : the federal courts and the long struggle for civil rights in South Carolina

Title

The slow undoing : the federal courts and the long struggle for civil rights in South Carolina / Stephen H. Lowe.

Author

Lowe, Stephen Harold,

Publication

Columbia, South Carolina : The University of South Carolina Press, [2021]
©2021

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	Sc E 22-86	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

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Details

Description

x, 244 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"Author Stephen Lowe provides the first comprehensive study of legal action in South Carolina, beginning in the mid-1930s, when Charles Hamilton Houston established the framework for the assault on segregation, and continuing well into the post-Brown era. He situates the study within the historiography of the "Long Civil Rights Movement," demonstrating that both advancement towards, and resistance to, the expansion of African American civil rights began much earlier, and continued much later, than is often recognized within the standard periodization of the movement. African American plaintiffs and lawyers from South Carolina, with support of lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, brought and argued civil rights lawsuits in the federal courts of South Carolina attempting to equalize, then desegregate schools, parks, and public life. Meanwhile, White citizens, mostly state politicians and local officials, hired lawyers who crafted new legal theories to defend state practices and forestall Black equality. Over the course of several decades, Blacks and Whites in South Carolina used the courts as a venue within which to contest the Constitutional definitions of justice, equality, and citizenship. Among its contributions, the manuscript expands the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement in South Carolina. While there is a growing literature on the struggle for civil rights in South Carolina, the current project further enhances our ability to understand the many and varied events and individuals who contributed to the struggle in the state. It also explores, in great detail, the extent to which South Carolinians, both black and white, used the courts as a battleground, either to advance racial justice or to delay the implementation of civil rights decisions through new legal and (spurious) sociological arguments respectively. It complicates the "desegregation with dignity" narrative that dominates the popular memory of the civil rights movement in South Carolina. In so doing it helps to answer the question of why the state, which had a long history of often violent repression of African American rights, saw relatively few incidents of the bus burnings and gubernatorial confrontations that marked the period in other states. In South Carolina, Lowe argues, "massive resistance" took place within the context of the federal courts, which were far from uniformly progressive in their rulings around racial equity"--

Subject

Genre/Form

History.
Trials, litigation, etc.

Note

Based on author's thesis (doctoral - Michigan State University, 1999) issued under title: The magnificent fight : civil rights litigation in South Carolina federal courts, 1940-1970.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-235) and index.

Contents

"This couldn't have been ignorance" : challenging the White Primary in the 1940s -- Not equal, but still separate : challenging Jim Crow education in the 1940s 30 -- "Unexampled courage" : school desegregation in the 1950s -- "Plessy has not been overturned" : law and resistance in the late 1950s -- "We don't allow colored people in here" : segregation to "integration with dignity," 1959-63 -- "We have not yet run out of courts" : desegregation in the mid-1960s -- "We've run out of courts, and we've run out of time" : freedom of choice and school desegregation to 1970 -- Desegregation, not integration : South Carolina Since 1968.

Call Number

Sc E 22-86

ISBN

9781643361765
1643361767
9781643362052
1643362054

LCCN

2021004002

OCLC

1223069466

Author

Lowe, Stephen Harold, author.

Title

The slow undoing : the federal courts and the long struggle for civil rights in South Carolina / Stephen H. Lowe.

Publisher

Columbia, South Carolina : The University of South Carolina Press, [2021]

Copyright Date

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-235) and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Indexed Term

Federal courts

Research Call Number

Sc E 22-86

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