Chapter 3: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: How Districts’ Responses to Desegregation Harmed Black Educators and Students in South Carolina

According to Walker E. Solomon, the executive secretary of the Palmetto Education Association—a professional organization that once represented South Carolina’s Black teachers, there were 7,500 Black educators in the state in 1956 (Solomon, 1956). That number rose to approximately 8,301 in the 1963–1964 school year (South Carolina State Department of Education, 1963–1964). The state’s general population increased from 2,382,594 in 1960 to 5,084,127 in 2018, and the number of Black South Carolinians similarly increased from 829,291 to 1,377,798 during the same period (U.S. Census Bureau, 1960a, 2018). However, the total number of Black teachers in the state declined from 8,301 in 1963–1964 to 7,722 in 2017–2018 (South Carolina State Department of Education, 1963–1964; South Carolina Department of Education, 2018). Based on our data review of the School Directory of South Carolina, Black teachers made up approximately 38% of the state’s teachers in the 1963–1964 school year. However, during the 2017–2018 school year, that percentage was just 15.18% (South Carolina Department of Education, 2018).