Confronting the Shame of the Past

By Tim Padgett

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 bus transportation for black students to reach their segregated schools, which were often 10 miles or more from their homes. "We ain't got no money to buy a bus for your n_____ children," R.M. Elliott declared. Says the younger Elliott: "My grandfather wasn't an evil man, but he was no hero by any means. He did what the times expected of him."

The 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 were also fired from jobs. A black church was burned down and its pastor run out of town. In the '60s, white families, determined to avoid integrated classrooms, built a private K-12 school, Clarendon Hall. Elliott became its headmaster in 1998 and two years later admitted the school's first blacks; today there are just five among Clarendon's 275 students.

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 ago.

Elliott grew up without questioning segregation. But he changed in the 1960s, especially after a teaching stint at a black school run by Methodists. He now believes that it's his mission, particularly as R.M. Elliott's grandson, to bring about the same change of heart in his white neighbors. "We owe those black families a great debt for what they did to further democratize this country," he says. "If whites reject the significance of the case and the bravery of the plaintiffs, then we're really rejecting our democracy."

Since he retired two years ago, Elliott has carried that message to churches, radio stations and Lions Club meetings. On May 17, 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 of the Clarendon County Council, who, along with Summerton Mayor Beth Hinson Phillips, is one of the few whites to openly back Elliott's campaign.

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. "But we [blacks] can't stand there muted for this commemoration, listening to others tell us what we and our families did." It will be hard to agree on how to achieve integration in Summerton when blacks and whites can't even agree on how to celebrate it. --By Tim Padgett