The way we were
The Levine Museum of the New South has an exhibition up about the South Carolina legal cases that began the process that became the Brown v. Board of Education case.
COURAGE: The Carolina Story That Changed America
Half a century ago Carolina families launched a lawsuit that changed America. This lawsuit was the first of five across the country that would lead to the 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown decision ruled racially segregated schools unconstitutional and set in motion a series of events that continue to shape our lives today.Few Americans realize that what’s known as the case of the century, started in the Carolinas. The final chapters of Brown played out in the Supreme Court, but the story began when a country preacher named Rev. J. A. De Laine and his neighbors in Clarendon County, SC filed a lawsuit demanding the end of separate, unequal schools for their children.
On January 31, Levine Museum of the New South opens COURAGE: The Carolina Story That Changed America. This groundbreaking new exhibit tells the story of ordinary people – people outside the traditional power structure, without wealth and often with little classroom education – and how they worked together to begin the process that ended legal segregation of the races in America’s schools.
An exhibition of national importance, COURAGE will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision. COURAGE is the Museum’s first major exhibit since the 2001 unveiling of the award-winning permanent exhibit Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers. It will be on display at the Museum through August 15, 2004, after which it will travel to the McKissick Museum in Columbia, SC.
