Word: summerton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hanging prominently in the foyer of Joseph Elliott's home in Summerton, S.C., is a portrait of the Confederate Army general, Robert E. Lee. Nearby, however, Elliott just as proudly displays newspaper clippings of his late great-uncle, a real-life Atticus Finch who defended blacks in the era of Jim Crow. Elliott, 64, has struggled a lifetime to reconcile these mixed images of the South. But one picture noticeably absent from his gallery is that of his late grandfather, R.M. Elliott, a wealthy sawmill owner and former Summerton school-board chairman who, in the 1940s, refused to provide...
...heroes, Elliott knows, were the black families in Summerton who filed the lawsuit Briggs v. Elliott contesting the school district's discriminatory treatment of their children. It was the first of the four cases to be heard that would be combined in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing school segregation. The white community's response was hostile. Harry and Eliza Briggs, who lived in a cabin on the Elliott estate, were fired from their jobs and had to move to Florida to find new work. Other black families who signed the Briggs' petitions...
...Summerton's public schools, on the other hand, became almost 99% black. They are still underfunded, spending just $5,600 a student, compared with the U.S. average of $7,524. The average combined SAT score at Scott's Branch High School is 761, the lowest in South Carolina. As a result, a new lawsuit to force the state to create more equitable means of financing public schools went to trial last year and is being heard in the same courthouse where Briggs started 53 years...
...Brown's 50th anniversary, he will take part in a forum on South Carolina public television on the ruling's legacy. So far he has received a cold shoulder from many of the town's whites. But his goal, he insists, is not only to thaw Summerton's race relations but also to improve its dismal schools and economy, which in recent years has lost bids to attract large employers because of their concerns about the low-skilled work force. Those stigmas "make it hard for any community to progress and attract business today," says Dwight Stewart, chairman...
Some blacks in Summerton are also wary of Elliott's efforts. It's not because they doubt his convictions but because they fear that the biracial group he recently helped create, the Summerton Revitalization Corporation, wants to bigfoot on what they insist should be a black-led local commemoration of the Brown anniversary. "Mr. Elliott is very sincere," says Joe De Laine Jr., 71, son of the late Rev. Joseph De Laine, who led the fight to get Briggs v. Elliott heard in court but then had to flee South Carolina after Ku Klux Klansmen attacked his house...