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4 Introduction This book has been a journey of discoveries about Reverend Isaiah DeQuincey Newman, his family, his colleagues, the history of the state of South Carolina, as well as about the one doing the discovering. It is intended that readers will also experience a journey of discoveries—that they too will leave this experience more informed and motivated in continuing to work for the creation of a more just and equal society. It is further intended that this book serve to move I. DeQuincey Newman’s contributions to building a more just and equal society beyond a mere footnote in our history books. Ultimately this book will serve as a primary source of data for serious students interested in a more in-depth analysis of human and civil rights, activism, and advocacy . More important is that it also spark an interest in the young and curious who have never heard of people in the civil rights struggle such as Esau Jenkins ( Johns Island), Septima Poinsette Clark (Charleston), Harry Briggs and Joseph A. DeLaine (Clarendon County), Levy G. Byrd (Cheraw), John H. McCray (Lincolnville), Modjeska Simkins (Columbia), James T. McCain (Sumter), and many more. Each of these agents of change is deserving of a singular place of recognition in the civil rights movement. However, all in some ways focused on education, whether public schools for general education or citizenship schools for adult citizenship education. Education was used as a primary strategy to uplift and free black Americans from bondage. One might say that John H. McCray (1910–87), editor of the Lighthouse and Informer (1938–54), taught through his journalistic skills. The motto of his paper was “Shedding Light for a Growing Race.” Modjeska Simkins (1899–1972), like John McCray, was a formidable agent of change. She was fearless in her leadership role in the local and state Introduction 5 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Black women were not the acknowledged leaders in the civil rights movement . This was also true for Modjeska Simkins, who was considered along with John McCray and James M. Hinton (1891–1970), NAACP state president , as the most important black leaders in South Carolina. Newman recognized in the waning influence of these three leaders that the NAACP leadership baton had been passed to him whether intentional or not. No one seemed able to explain fully the lull that came over the activist NAACP and its three prominent and outspoken leaders of the 1930s and 1940s. Much of the demise, however, was attributed to the repressive racial atmosphere of the mid-1950s. It was purported that after the Brown v. Board of Education decision Hinton, the once charismatic head of the state NAACP, had lost the touch and somehow failed to move the NAACP forward in the wake of the Brown decision. According to Simkins, who was secretary of the NAACP state conference from 1940 to 1957, it appeared that outside pressures from the white establishment along with harassment by agitators who attacked his home with a barrage of gunfire were at the core of Hinton’s stagnant leadership.1 On the other hand, a red-baiting campaign was levied against Simkins by South Carolina political machinery and the racist Charleston News and Courier newspaper. McCray, the third visible and vocal leader in the South Carolina NAACP, was the first of the three to experience the wrath of the South Carolina white power structure. In 1949 McCray covered the rape trial and subsequent execution of a twenty-four-year-old black man and reported that the alleged rape of the white teenage girl was in fact consensual sex. A white reporter, independent of McCray, made the same accusation. Both men were charged with criminal libel. The white reporter was never brought to trial, but McCray was convicted and eventually served sixty days on a chain gang. It was said that McCray’s “aggressive style” often placed him at odds with the white power structure.2 By 1958 Hinton had formally resigned as NAACP state president. Simkins was not nominated for the eighteenth time as NAACP conference secretary, and McCray’s fragile financial situation was exacerbated by his sixty-day stint on the chain gang, leading to the eventual demise of his newspaper, the mouthpiece for the civil rights movement and justice issues. The white establishment used its usual tactics to silence or effectively diminish these black activist voices: imprisonment, character assassination , or the terrorist-style attack with a barrage of gunfire directed...

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