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Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine was born in 1898 in Clarendon County, South Carolina, he passed away in 1974. DeLaine, started petitions and pushed to end discrimination. He encouraged local families to join the class action lawsuit Briggs vs Elliot, the first of many suites to challenge public school segregation. He worked as a laborer at a dry cleaner to pay his way though Allen University, an African American college in nearby Columbia. He earned his bachelor of art degree in 1931 and later went to seminary. He returned to Clarendon county as a minister and public school teacher. In these position he became both a respectable leader in the community and an ardent advocate of equal rights and social action. By 1943 he was the president of the local chapter of the Nation Association for the advancement of colored people (NAACP).

Clarendon County like many area in the south legalized segregation in all public facilities, from rest rooms to classrooms. As a teacher for seventeen years DeLaine witnessed first hand the racial inequalities in South Carolina. The white schools spent four times the amount of money as their black counterparts. Most black school we dilapidated, and grossly overcrowded. Black teachers were paid less than white teachers. While 2000 white students had buses, the 6000 black students had none and frequently had to walk ten to fifteen miles to school.

Churches were the center of the African American community in rural Clarendon County a world without telephones, television or news papers to address the black community, the church was the place where people could catch up on news. It was a safe place, away from the watchful eyes of the white community leaders.

NAACP and Thurgood Marshall Rev. DeLaine invited NAACP legal Defense Fund Attorney Thurgood Marshall to take the Clarendon county case. Marshall was hesitant to take a case in the rural deep south, where odds of winning were slim to none.

Thurgood Marshall attended Howard University law School, where he studied under Charles Hamilton Houston who encouraged his students to overturn the "Separate but equal" decision, Plessy v. Ferguson. Marshall's strategy with the NAACP legal Defense Fund was to chip away at " separate but equal" with a series of cases. he filed hundreds of lawsuits, appealed losses, and won cases desegregating graduate school. Ultimately, he wanted to challenge segregation in public schools.

Rights Denied Three Constitutional amendments after the civil war granted certain rights to former slaves and their children: However, by the end of the 1890s, African Americans were again denied the right to vote though action at state and local levels. No African American held elected office in the south. In this world, white legislatures set aside money for two public education systems- One for blacks, one for whites. under Plessy v. Ferguson, an 1896 ruling by the United States Supreme Court, separate facilities were deemed legal, provided they were equal. But facilities were not equal.
 * 13th Amendment outlawed slavery.
 * 14th Amendment granted citizenship and its protection to former slaves.
 * 15th Amendment guaranteed the right of all men to vote. (Women would not get to vote until 1920).

The Way it Was: Poor, Rural, and and Unequal

Who would dreamed, in the 1940s, Clarendon County, South Carolina was an unlikely place for a major Civil Rights case to begin. Most American citizens were sharecroppers on white-owned land. like most southern counties, Clarendon county has two school systems, both maintain an all white school board. In 1949, the Clarendon County spent an average of $179. per white pupil and $43 per black pupil. Though the quality of the buildings and resources was much greater for white schools, the teacher in the black schools were well educated and dedicated to their students' education.

In the late 1940, DeLaine encouraged African Americans Levi Pearson and Harry and Eliza Briggs to petition county officials for buses. (Buses were the only thing the blacks of Clarendon county asked for at that time). The NAACP persisted in 1950, twenty plaintiffs sued for better school and equal education. a panel consisting of three federal judges ruled in Briggs v Elliot that black schools were unequal to whites schools and therefore unconstitutional. The court ordered the schools to be made equal, but didn't address the issue of desegregation.

While DeLaine was a respected leader in the black community his ideas were scary to many. Racial tension flared in the white communities in which the Ku Klux klan (KKK) still beat and lynched African Americans who challenged the status quo. The Twenty families joined the petition for a class action lawsuit each of the families were eventually, fired, thrown off their land, evicted, burned out, or ran out of town. Delaine and his family put up a good fight but was force to move away. As he contenued to help from 50 miles away he was told he was out of the county and unable to take part.

COURAGE -the vision to end segregation, and the guts to fight for it. Over a half century ago, Rev. Joseph Armstrong De Laine led the fight for equal education in Clarendon, a rural ares of South Carolina. Rev. De Laine his family, neighbors, followed their courageous struggle from Clarendon county all the way to the U S Supreme court; known better as BROWN VS BROWN.

Mrs. Ophelia De Laine, was a teacher in the local school. Ninety-six (96) Children attended the grade school which was in a one room worn down house with wooden floors, cleaned with motor oil to keep the dust down. Boards missing, the coal/wood burning stove was used to keep the school house warm. The older children would come in early to clean and heat the building before the young children would arrive. There were not enough chairs, the children would place a board on two chairs making room for a third student in the middle. Although the total enrollment was ninety-six children, that number was almost never met, due to field work and the fact the children had to walk 9 to 15 miles morning and evening to get to the school house. This is why the lawsuit really started; the country first asked for a school bus to take the children to and from school daily. Some of the towns people came together and raided $300. to purchase a bus, the bus ran for a very short time before failed to go and longer. It was patched up over and over again but it soon gave out. The group came together and raised funds for another bus; already worn out it like the first bus, it too only lasted a short period of time. most people of the county were poor and had very little education, only an second or third grade education. Most were sharecropper, farmer or did odd job around the county, making money extremely hard to get.

After the second bus failed some of the folks of the county went to Rev. De Laine and ask for advise, since he was educated, a principal, a pastor he was regarded as trusted individual. Rev.De Laine as trusted enough were his neighbors would take their life saving to him to count before it was taken to the local bank.

Although Mrs. De Laine was a teacher and Rev. De Laine was a principal; they never worked at the same facility, although it was the same district within the county. Some of the families that were a bit well off than the others, would send their older children to neighbor homes to do chores to help pay for transportation to school, or tutoring. They would help with vegetables gardens, help prepare the food or light mending, washing, etc.