Introduction

Frame of My Destiny

Page 1 →This autobiography was written to honor the unbroken chain of family contributions to the education of Black people over the generations beginning shortly after the end of the Civil War. I place myself in that story by focusing on events that have shaped my commitment to Black educational advancement and the individuals who have encouraged and shepherded me along my journey to define my core beliefs. The story begins with the lives of ancestors who were enslaved on four plantations in Orangeburg County, South Carolina and one plantation in Marlboro County, South Carolina. Many of them found a way to learn to read and write under the oppressive conditions of slavery. The determination and efforts of my paternal ancestors paved the way for my paternal great-grandfather, Thomas Green, a former slave, to establish a school for other former slaves and their children in Tatum, South Carolina at the end of the nineteenth century. The doggedness and cleverness of my maternal ancestors to educate themselves culminated with my maternal grandfather, James Alvirgus Brown, teaching at two historically Black colleges, Biddle University and Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The untold stories of other enslaved ancestors who struggled to become literate through sheer grit, determination, or the generosity of others, both white and Black, are a part of the larger story that unfolds.

Page 2 →The motivation to follow my ancestors by making a worthy contribution to Black education is attributable primarily to the inspiration and moral guidance received from my mother, Anne Elizabeth Brown Bowers, who was a lifelong teacher herself. She attended South Carolina State College High School, where she held the class office of Assistant Secretary. The principal at the school was H. P. Sharperson. Mother continued her education at South Carolina State Agricultural and Mechanical College (the former Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College) where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree on May 30, 1933. After graduating from college, and completing advance education courses at Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee, her first job was teaching high school English and Social Science in Statesboro, Georgia in 1934. After six years in Statesboro, she returned to Orangeburg and taught elementary and high school in the Great Branch, Bowman, and Branchville, South Carolina school districts.

Throughout my mother’s professional career, she did all that she could to make sure that her students received a quality education. When conditions were not suitable to accomplish that goal, she fought to remove the obstacles that stood in her way. Although soft-spoken, she was not afraid to take a stand for what she believed in. She counselled her students frequently on the realities of life for Black people growing up in a segregated society and taught them to develop the intestinal fortitude and coping skills to endure and push forward.

My first awareness of my mother’s contribution to Black education had its genesis in 1954. That year brought two momentous events to South Carolina: Hurricane Hazel and the US Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, outlawing racial segregation in the nation’s public school system.¹

As a 7-year-old second grader, Hurricane Hazel was the more memorable event. On Friday, October 15, 1954, Hazel made landfall Page 3 →near the South Carolina / North Carolina border as a Category 4 hurricane. It had a devastating punch with strong winds that could be felt one hundred miles inland in Orangeburg, my birthplace. I remember that day well, because my brothers and I were home from school huddled in the hallway on the second floor of our house. The winds were ferocious and frightening. We survived with no visible damage to the house, but the storm caused 469 deaths in Haiti, 95 deaths in the United States, and 81 deaths in Canada with $382 million of property damage. Its wrath was so devastating that the name Hazel was retired from use for North American hurricanes.²

The Brown v. Board of Education case was decided on May 17, 1954. The Briggs v. Elliott case, involving the denial of equal educational facilities to Black school children in Clarendon County, South Carolina, adjacent to Orangeburg County, was the first of five companion cases argued before the US Supreme Court.³ Those cases were consolidated with the Brown case originating in Topeka, Kansas. According to custom, the Briggs case should have been the lead case in the caption of the Supreme Court Reports. That did not happen; many have speculated that because the court’s mandate would grant to Black citizens an educational status equal to that of white people, which would likely engender massive resistance from the Southern states, the court did not want the decision to appear to be targeting the South.

Two years after the Brown decision was handed down, I knew that something consequential had happened. Our family’s economic condition suddenly changed for the worse. I noticed that my mother was no longer working as a public school teacher in the Bowman, Orangeburg County school system. Instead, she was working as a domestic servant in a white household headed by an insurance executive in the exclusive Moss Heights neighborhood of Orangeburg. She was absent from the household a great deal, and food became scarce at home. In fact, she would bring home leftovers from her Page 4 →domestic job to feed the family. When my mother cooked rice for dinner, I remember her fabricating a story about how she liked the crust at the bottom of the pot. In fact, she did not relish the burnt residue, but she wanted her sons to have the fluffy part because there was not enough rice to feed all of us.

At first, my brothers and I did not understand the reason for our changed circumstance. A short time later, we learned that our mother was fired from her job as a public school teacher for an act of conscience. After a lengthy delay by South Carolina in desegregating its public school system, my mother and several other teachers (including Mamie McCollom, wife of Reverend Matthew McCollom, pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Orangeburg and president of the Orangeburg branch of the NAACP) signed an NAACP petition in 1956 demanding that the “all deliberate speed” mandate of the Brown decision be implemented immediately. Further, they refused to reveal or terminate their membership in the NAACP, as required of state employees by South Carolina law.⁴ Because of their acts of defiance, they were fired. Firing schoolteachers was a common tactic used by the white establishment to retaliate against Black people who spoke out for the cause of civil rights. In the same year, twenty-one teachers at the Elloree Training School, in Orangeburg County, also lost their jobs for refusing to disown the NAACP. South Carolina sought to cripple the NAACP by enacting the anti-NAACP oath law. The aim was to punish the organization for its role in spearheading the Briggs case and its continuing activities in organizing the Black community. South Carolina’s massive resistance effort to thwart desegregation of the public schools targeted public school teachers across the state.

Mother remained unemployed as a public school teacher for seven long years. It was difficult for her to adjust to the reality of not being able to pursue her love of teaching. She had made a commitment upon graduation from college in 1933 to follow in the Page 5 →footsteps of her father, Professor Brown, and mother, Lillian Brown, both of whom were teachers dedicated to the advancement of Black education. That traumatic episode left emotional scars that took years to heal. While members of the Black community knew of and understood her circumstance, she was never comfortable with her degraded status as a domestic servant. However, she never doubted or questioned the correctness of her actions in protesting the educational inequality of Black children, drawing deep upon her knowledge of how her enslaved ancestors dealt with unimaginable pain and abuse during slavery. Mother was forced to rebuild her life after this devastating setback.

The suffering she endured had a profound impact on me and influenced the direction my life would take. Certainly, there was sorrow, bitterness, and anger at first over how my mother was treated. However, after internalizing the injustice that had been visited upon her, I shed my nonchalant attitude toward learning and became singularly focused on high academic achievement. I realized for the first time that the white establishment was fearful of Black people obtaining a quality education. Ever since the introduction of slavery in America, enslavers knew that education was the great equalizer and that having literate slaves would sound the death knell on the institution. In high school, I became deeply involved in civil rights activities—participating in sit-ins at lunch counters and suffering the attendant consequence of being arrested. In 1963, I joined the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. My incessant pursuit of learning motivated me to attend Fisk University later in 1963 as an early entrant before completing high school. After studying at Fisk for only one year, I transferred to the recently desegregated University of South Carolina (USC). In 1967, I began my legal studies at Harvard Law School determined to return home to continue the fight for civil rights. And in 1973, three years after graduation, I returned to Page 6 →South Carolina to integrate the law faculty at USC School of Law as its first full-time African American professor.

It is uncanny that my appointment occurred exactly one hundred years after the university was first desegregated during Reconstruction in 1873 and appointed its first-ever African American professor, Richard T. Greener. Professor Greener received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College as its first Black graduate in 1870, a hundred years before I graduated from Harvard Law School in 1970. Although appointed professor of mental and moral philosophy, Professor Greener was also the university’s librarian as well as a part-time professor at USC School of Law while a student at that institution.⁵ In 1973, I stood on Professor Greener’s shoulders at the law school by following him as a full-time professor a century later. It is sobering for me to contemplate that the two of us, while in our late twenties, were connected to a common destiny.

Page 7 →My mother has always been my north star. When I was an underachiever in school at an early age, she never despaired. She saw special qualities in me—patience, empathy, awareness, reflection, and loyalty—that many others did not see. She taught me that education was a lifelong pursuit with the object of learning how to think and make well-reasoned decisions. I remember her words to me: “never be afraid to fail; one day others will appreciate your true qualities.” That was all the support I needed to succeed.

In my eulogy at her funeral in 1982, I tried to capture who she was.

Mother was a dreamer. She was an incorrigible optimist. She always saw the good in life. This made her a good teacher; she had no trouble inspiring others. She taught others to believe in themselves and encouraged them to dream greatness for themselves. She always had a smile and a helping hand for anyone who asked of her. . . . Our Mother was a strong, quiet and compassionate person who never complained. She was a woman for all seasons.

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny, but what we put into it is our own. Mother had no say about the beginning of her life and could not predict when it would end. However, she did fill in the frame with the fullness and joy of life and a caring for others.

Exhibiting the wisdom of Solon and her father, Professor Brown, my mother knew others and knew them well, and they reciprocated with their generosity throughout her life. Nearly half of the people who attended her funeral had to stand outside the packed Mt. Zion United Methodist Church. The outpouring of sympathy was palpable as evidenced by the eulogies and testimonials given on that sad day. Because mother’s selfless contributions were well-known and appreciated by the entire community, many had difficulty gaining Page 8 →closure upon the death of such a blessed and endearing person. She has remained in my thoughts ever since her death more than forty years ago and has been a constant motivator of my accomplishments throughout life.