Did you know South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina [USC]) enslaved people of African descent? How about the fact that it desegregated twice? Were you aware that a Black faculty member taught Black students at USC in the 1870s? Invisible No More documents the African-American experience at USC from 1801 to the present, seeking to answer the question, “What does it mean to be an African American at the flagship institution located in the capital city of the seedbed of the Confederacy?” Through a series of chronologically organized chapters, the book shows how Black individuals actively “molded the university into something greater Page 212 →than the sum of its parts.” Instead of focusing on a particular time period, this ambitious volume purposefully connects over two hundred years of Black agency against the consistent and evolving efforts of oppression. In doing so, it shows the “centrality of African Americans to the history of the University of South Carolina.”

The book opens with a foreword by Valinda W. Littlefield, who recounts the origins of this volume, which grew out of fiftieth-anniversary commemorations of the second desegregation (1963) at USC when Robert Anderson, Henrie Monteith, and James Solomon enrolled. Graham Duncan then reveals the connections between USC and slavery before the Union’s victory in the Civil War. Duncan’s meticulous combing of archival documents shows that the university hired enslaved individuals to help build the campus and care for its students and faculty by cooking, cleaning, and performing other essential tasks. On occasion, the university itself enslaved individuals such as Jack, who aided professors in their laboratories. Jack’s mysterious death after university president Thomas Cooper’s request and authorization to “direct proper punishment to be inflicted upon him” reminds us of the backlash to even the smallest gains of autonomy for Black individuals.

In chapter two, Tyler D. Parry recounts the first desegregation of USC with Henry E. Hayne’s enrollment and the brief moment in which a university “irrespective of race or color” existed during Reconstruction. As Parry argues, “the university not only disproved racist generalizations of Black intellectual inferiority but also rebuked the belief that the races could not amicably coexist in the same space.” New scholarships provided opportunities to Black students and poor white students, thus challenging the socioeconomic hierarchy of the state. Women attending the Normal School located at the university also benefited from this intellectual environment and went on to become educational leaders across the country. This progress came to a screeching halt when Wade Hampton III assumed the governorship and embarked on his plan to “starve out the University … and reopen it as a school for white youth exclusively.”

The next two chapters are biographical in nature and highlight largely forgotten figures of USC’s history. In chapter three, Christian K. Anderson and Jason C. Darby focus on the remarkable life and legacy of Richard T. Greener, a Black professor, librarian, and student at USC during Reconstruction. Highlighting the extraordinary accomplishments of Greener and his fellow colleagues and students, the chapter leaves us wondering what could have been. Meanwhile, Evan A. Kutzler uses a cache of letters to piece together the little-discussed life of Simon Peter Smith, an enslaved man Page 213 →forced to labor at South Carolina College who eventually earned degrees from Howard University and Chicago Theological Seminary before embarking on a theological career.

In chapter five, Brian A. Robinson zooms out to situate the events at USC within the educational developments across South Carolina. The reconstruction government’s push for educational opportunity, regardless of race or class, was ultimately undermined in the 1880s. Using racial fears to divide the populace, wealthy politicians successfully undermined public education in hopes of restoring the antebellum racial and social class hierarchy.

Attention then shifts to putting the efforts of desegregation into context. Robert Greene II details how two separate and unsuccessful attempts to desegregate USC in the 1930s and ‘40s ultimately contributed to the downfall of segregation. Although USC remained an all-white institution, these attempts at integration engendered court decisions that led to the creation of a law school for Black students at South Carolina State. Ironically, this new school created to satisfy the “separate but equal” clause would soon produce the lawyers who ultimately dismantled segregation in the state.

The last third of the book centers around the experiences of Black students in the latter half of the twentieth century. In chapter seven, Marcia G. Synnott explores the experiences of the Black students who desegregated USC a second time in 1963. Although legal barriers fell, these students continued to face prejudice and had to carry on the fight for equality that their predecessors began. In chapter eight, Ramon M. Jackson looks at how students and faculty pushed for change during the Black Campus Movement at USC, and in doing so, brought new intellectual ideas and programs to the university.

The last two chapters explore the power of symbolism and memory. In chapter nine, Holly Genovese focuses on Black students’ efforts to protest the playing of “Dixie” and the display of the Confederate battle flag. The racist response of some white students highlights how entrenched white supremist ideology was on the campus. Finally, Katharine Thompson Allen and Lydia Mattice Brandt recount the challenges of commemorating African-American history at USC using the creation of historical markers and a statue for Richard T. Greener as examples. Their measured prose remind us that true reconciliation requires meaningful introspection and structural change. Acknowledgment is only the beginning. In an afterword bringing the volume to a close, Henri Monteith Treadwell, one of the students who desegregated the school in 1963, provides a candid and inspiring recollection of her time at USC and a call to action as many of the indignities that she endured in the 1960s persist.

Page 214 →As with most edited collections, there is uneven coverage of certain time periods and subjects, but the editors and authors beautifully used the threads of agency and resistance to stitch together a cohesive and accessible volume. As Greene and Parry remind us, “the process of desegregation should be thought of as ongoing,” and the “memory of the past cannot, by itself, be a substitute for genuine change in the present.” In keeping with that spirit, this is a book every USC student must read and every South Carolinian should read.

Joshua Casmir Catalano, Clemson University