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"G" is for Gressette Committee (1951-1966)

South Carolina From A to Z
SC Public Radio

"G" is for Gressette Committee (1951-1966). In 1951, the South Carolina General Assembly created the South Carolina School Committee at the request of state senator Marion Gressette of Calhoun County. Following the filing of the Briggs v. Elliott case, which challenged the “separate but equal” policy in South Carolina’s public schools, the General Assembly created the committee to prepare for, and hopefully thwart, the possibility of federally mandated desegregation. Gressette was chairman of the fifteen-person committee. Though the committee opposed desegregation and slowed its pace in South Carolina, it advocated nonviolent resistance to change and actually became a vehicle for accommodation by stopping many segregation laws being debated by the legislature. In 1966, on the conclusion of most legal questions regarding segregation--and on the chairman’s recommendation, the legislature dissolved the Gressette Committee.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.