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“D” is for DeLaine, Joseph Armstrong (1898-1974)

“D” is for DeLaine, Joseph Armstrong (1898-1974). Clergyman, civil rights activist. Born near Manning, Delaine graduated from Allen University and its seminary. After graduation he accepted an appointment as pastor to an AME Church in Spring Hill in Clarendon County. He also took a teaching position at Bob Johnson School near David Station. He was dismayed at the lack of buses and the terrible school facilities. His concerns led to a 1948 federal lawsuit challenging the lack of school buses for Black children. The case was dismissed on a technicality. Delaine, with the encouragement of the NAACP, then persuaded twenty Clarendon parents to sign a new lawsuit requesting equal educational facilities. That suit, Briggs v. Elliott challenged the constitutionality of segregation. For his actions, Joseph Armstrong DeLaine was forced to flee his native state and never returned.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.