civil rights

In this week's episode of Walter Edgar's Journal, Richard Gergel details the impact of the 1946 blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard on both President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America's civil rights history.Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran of World War II, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver’s disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody.

In this week's episode of Walter Edgar's Journal, Richard Gergel details the impact of the 1946 blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard on both President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America's civil rights history.Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran of World War II, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver’s disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody.

“E” is for Eight Box Law [1882]. The Eight Box Law of 1882 was an election law designed to ensure white supremacy in South Carolina without violating the Fifteenth Amendment—which barred states from depriving their citizens of the vote on the basis of race.

“E” is for Eight Box Law [1882]. The Eight Box Law of 1882 was an election law designed to ensure white supremacy in South Carolina without violating the Fifteenth Amendment—which barred states from depriving their citizens of the vote on the basis of race.

The U.S. Justice Department has announced a civil rights investigation into the treatment of people with mental illnesses by the state of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City and Oklahoma City police. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said Thursday that the investigation will focus on whether adults with mental illnesses are wrongly institutionalized in settings such as psychiatric treatment centers rather than community-based settings. The investigation comes as the Justice Department is conducting similar investigations in Missouri, Kentucky, South Carolina, Minneapolis and Phoenix.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has joined House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn in visiting a rural South Carolina school that is now part of a National Park Service program to safeguard institutions connected to the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional. Legislation signed by President Joe Biden in May added two South Carolina schools to the Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park. Haaland and Clyburn both spoke about the importance of preserving and learning from America's history.

Federal authorities say they have started a civil rights investigation following the suspension of three Arkansas law enforcement officers after a video posted on social media showed two of them beating a man while a third officer held him on the ground. A U.S. Justice Department spokesperson said Monday that the federal investigation would be separate from the Arkansas State Police investigation of the arrest. Authorities said the officers were responding to a report of a man making threats outside a convenience store Sunday in the small town of Mulberry, about 140 miles northwest of Little Rock, near the border with Oklahoma.

Police in South Carolina have arrested a man who allegedly sent dozens of threats to civil rights attorney and former state lawmaker Bakari Sellers. Grant Edward Olson Jr., of Asheville, North Carolina, is also accused of intimidating Sellers for exercising his civil rights as an attorney, television commentator and lobbyist. Authorities say Olson sent dozens of messages to Sellers on Instagram that included racial slurs and indications that Olson was armed. Police said Olson admitted to sending the messages. Sellers, who's Black, thanked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division for last week's arrest and said the the threats affected not just him but his family.

Orangeburg photographer Cecil Williams has captured thousands of images of African Americans' fight for equal rights over decades and is now set to unveil a wall art series that depicts their history in the state. It is a story which he hopes will reach middle and high schools.

A shuttered bowling alley at the center of a 1968 integration protest where state police killed three Black students is being remade into a civil rights center. State troopers shot into a crowd of students on the historically Black campus of South Carolina State University almost 54 years ago. Protesters were trying to pressure the white owner of the All-Star Bowling Lanes into letting Black patrons use the lanes. The National Park Service is helping a non-profit group renovate the All-Star Bowling Lanes, remaking it into a fully-functional bowling alley with a civil rights theme. Tuesday marks the official anniversary of the shootings.