At the start of the Martin Luther King Day weekend, the University of South Carolina celebrated its brief period of racial integration during Reconstruction with a newly-installed historic marker. Union victory in the Civil War allowed for the creation of a democratic government in South Carolina for the first time and the state’s post-war Constitution mandated that education be offered to all South Carolinians regardless of race. This period of integration ended in 1877 when former Confederates violently took control of the state and expelled Blacks from the campus.
This was not the first historic marker mentioning Reconstruction.
In 1936 a Lost Cause adherent “historic marker” was installed on the segregated campus. The marker described the school as one in which “the entire student body volunteered for Confederate service” in 1861. The school is described as being under “Radical Control” during Reconstruction when it was racially integrated, and having been “Closed 1877-1880” without explaining that the violently installed White Supremacist Governor and former Confederate General Wade Hampton had closed the school to eliminate Blacks from the faculty and student body.
The Columbia Sesquicentennial Commission of 1936 which installed the marker was highlighting its antagonism to the “Radical” changes imposed during Reconstruction. In 1868 a “Radical” Constitution drafted by delegates chosen during an election in which Black men were able to vote for the first time, had a provision providing that “all the public schools, colleges, and universities of this State, supported in the whole or in part by the public funds, shall be free and open to all children and youths of the state, without regard to race or color” (Article X, Section 10). Black students were afterwards admitted, Black faculty were hired, and Black trustees were sworn in. In a state where most of the citizens were Black, the school became one of the most integrated colleges in the country.
Ultimately the former Confederates won. Wade Hampton reopened the school in 1880. No Blacks remained apart from laborers and the school stayed whites-only until 1963. Today, even though a quarter of the State of South Carolina’s people are Black, only 9% of the university’s students are.
Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:
Was it true that the entire student body served in the Confederate army or navy in 1861? The percentage of blacks who attend high school or higher in S.C. is 83.38%. Some of the reasons blacks and other races do not attend college are financial pressure — whether sheer lack of funds or the need to hold down a paying job while in college — is a primary reason. Spending excessive time in remedial classes that carry no college credit but drain financial aid is another. Many Black and Latino students may also drop out because they feel excluded or isolated.
I don’t know if the entire student body enlisted at the start of the war, but that has become the accepted narrative.