It’s Hard to Say Goodbye

Forty years ago, black parents in Summerton, South Carolina, sued white school officials for segregating black children in separate and inferior schools. Their struggle sparked Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that declared school segregation unconstitutional in 1954.

But Summerton continued to evade integration by building a new black high school — Scott’s Branch — as part of a state plan to prove that separate schools could be equal. For decades, the student body at Scott’s Branch remained almost all black, its facilities substandard.

In June, Scott’s Branch closed to make way for a new high school. Erika Johnson Spinelli of The Item spent three months with the last graduating class, listening to students share their opinions about education in one of the poorest school districts in the state — and their hopes for the future.

 

Summerton, S.C. — The 52 graduates crossed the Scott’s Branch High School stage Thursday with mixed emotions. Many are sad to leave the school they know so well: a dilapidated building worn by time and use that houses a predominantly black student body, despite the fight for integration that began here 40 years ago.

But some students are glad to be leaving Summerton, a racially divided town where jobs are scarce and the future, for them at least, is bleak.

Most are aware of the historic significance of their graduation; as they walked across that stage in their caps and gown, they marked the end of an era. And they believe that those who follow — who will graduate from a new, $7.5 million high school — have a chance at something better, something more equal and, perhaps, less separate.

The State Department of Education said in November 1993 that it would intervene in the district’s operation because it had failed to meet academic standards. Even the district’s superintendent, Dr. Milton Marley, said he believes the students haven’t gotten the education they deserve.

“You’ll hear people say you don’t learn much here, but you do,” argued Terell Oliver, an 18-year-old who graduated Thursday. Terell and some of his classmates don’t share the disparaging views that were widely expressed recently when the 40th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education was observed and the media descended upon Summerton.

Sitting in a gym flanked by scuffed wooden bleachers and broken window panes, Terell and classmate Kenneth Jones — who both graduated at the top of their class, their names frequently appearing on the all-“A’s” and -“B’s” honors list — reflected on their historic alma mater and the education they received there.

Terell started with the broken window panes. “We had baseball practice in the gym one day when it was raining,” he laughed. “That’s why some of them are broken.”

He pointed to two in particular, naming the teammates who did the damage. He looked around. “I know every crack in this place,” the Summerton native said. He paused. “I don’t think I’m deprived.”

“I like it small. The teachers know you, and they know what you’re capable of doing,” said Kenneth, who moved here from Charlotte three years ago. “You have a friendship with the teachers. It’s not like a teacher-student relationship, but more of a friendship. And that’s important.

“But it’s up to you,” he said. “You have to apply yourself.”

There are a few things he misses about Charlotte schools. “There’s no lockers here,” he said first. “And at the junior high I went to in Charlotte, it was mostly white.”

He doesn’t really miss the mix of races, although he says a single-race education “can be good. It can be bad.” But he knows that blacks and whites in society are “mixed,” and perhaps schools should reflect the community they serve.

Terell complained that universities overlook the small, rural school when it comes to handing out athletic scholarships. “See that boy playing basketball?” He pointed at a short, stocky fellow on the court. “He’s a good football player. He can stop anybody. But he’s only got little schools calling him.”

Their program is a tad underfunded, Terell said. He grimaced as he describes the baseball team’s seven-year-old uniforms made of polyester and nylon.

Despite state efforts to equalize funding, a small tax base and other factors combine to lessen the amount of local and state income District 1 receives compared to the amount of funds that urban, land-rich school districts get.

During spring baseball season, Terell played on the same field the football team used in the fall, in the side yard of the long-closed Summerton School. The bleachers were moved from one side of the field to the other, depending on the season. There was a scoreboard for football games, but no point-keeper for the baseball games. The only score was kept by memory, and “What’s the score?” was echoed frequently by newcomers to a game.

 

“Sink or Swim”

Down the street from the athletic field sits the high school, a county yard from U.S. 301. Across Fourth Street is a yard of trailers and tin-roofed houses. A rooster crows during the day, serenading students outside at lunch.

When a friend told Kisha Beach that she would be finishing her education at an all-black high school, she didn’t believe her. But when she arrived at Scott’s Branch two years ago to begin the 11th grade, she found out her friend wasn’t kidding. The school she attended in Brooklyn, a high school for students intending to enter a medical profession, was about 50 percent black.

But she appreciated the education she’s received at Scott’s Branch. This year, Kisha took college-level English and college calculus via satellite. “At one time I thought this school was easier. But they just do things slower,” she said. “At other schools [with adequate facilities] you learn the same thing. . . . Sometimes we just have to improvise.”

Senior class president and salutatorian Quantae Ragin admitted she didn’t have the greatest scientific study opportunities at Scott’s Branch. “We haven’t had the facilities — you know how it is,” she shrugged. “So we had to compromise a lot.”

The 18-year-old took some challenging classes her senior year: pre-calculus, physics, history, English, and college-level art history.

Superintendent Marley sees the Scott’s Branch student education in a different light, though. His answer, when asked whether the students have received the education they deserve, is a simple, definite “No.”

“They won’t know it until they go to college and interact with others and see what they missed,” he said.

But Marley speaks in defense of the school to state department officials who say that the school doesn’t meet academic standards. “We’ve been left to sink or swim. We’ve gotten no help from anybody — not from higher education, no one. We’ve had one student teacher in the six years I’ve been here, and that’s only because she’s from here and insisted on being here,” he said.

 

Planning to Leave

Marley hopes the new high school will provide an incentive for graduates to help create jobs that would allow them to live and work in Summerton: He hopes they’ll want to send their children to the new Scott’s Branch High School.

At present, this small town doesn’t have much to offer these students: Kenneth Jones wants to become an engineer; Quantae Ragin, a chemist; Terell Oliver, a nurse; Kisha Beach, a physical therapist. Those kinds of jobs are nonexistent.

For now, there aren’t even many part-time jobs for teenagers who want to work; only two of this group, Kenneth and Shamonia Baxter, work after school. Kenneth puts in 16 hours a week at a local truck stop to help his mom pay the bills and to save money for school trips. Shamonia is a housekeeper at the Summerton Inn on the weekends and tutored elementary school students for the ’76 Foundation, a non-profit educational group, after school.

But those aren’t full-time jobs, Kenneth said, which is why many Scott’s Branch graduates will leave town. So they have worked hard at school, won scholarships, and are planning their moves for later this summer. He wants to live in Atlanta, where he believes there are good jobs and more opportunities for blacks. “(I want) to help mankind. To help my race,” he said. “There are stereotypes about blacks — that we’re lazy, on welfare. But every race has their poor section.”

Terell plans to leave town, too. From his course-work in health occupation at F.E. DuBose Vocational Center in Manning, he is certified as a nurse’s assistant. He wants to go to Central Carolina Technical College and major in either nursing or graphic engineering. Then, he said, he’ll be ready for Baltimore. “Nobody wants to just stay here and be nothing,” he said.

Kisha will go to Charleston Southern University and major in biology. On Awards Day last week she learned that she won a full scholarship — $12,000 — for her four-year education there. She wants to be a physical therapist or pediatrician. She said her mother advised her not to go to an all-black college — “‘because the world’s not all black,’ she said to me” Kisha remarked. “She said, ‘You’d be isolating yourself.’”

Her roommate may be Shamonia, who plans to major in education there — and return to Summerton to perfect her teaching skills. “I want to give back some of what I’ve been given,” she said.

Quantae will leave Summerton, too, but she may return one day. She has decided to major in chemistry at Winthrop University. She picked Winthrop because of its diversity. Her predominantly black high school alma mater made her “want to explore more,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t choose a black college. Most of my friends think the same way.”

 

No Hangouts

The high school isn’t the only thing that’s segregated in Summerton; the town, too, is split by color.

“People don’t mix like they should,” said John Ragin, a graduate who plans to enter the Navy. “People should be used to getting together.”

But there’s a problem: There’s no place to get together, whether you’re black or white. Growing up in Summerton means no movie theater, no hangouts, few jobs and not even much trouble to get into. “It’s small, boring, and there’s nothing to do,” said Brooklyn transplant Kisha. She lives with her mom just outside of Pinewood, and has to borrow a car to visit friends.

“We need something here. We need a movie theater,” Quantae said. “We have to go so far away to do something, to go to a club — a safe club.” She speculates that the long-time separation and slow-growing economy is the history of the town that won’t go away. While school and community integration was successful in many Southern towns 30 years ago, Summerton has remained the same, despite the fight for segregation that started here.

“The whites live on that side,” Kenneth said as he pointed toward town. “And the blacks live on that side,” he pointed in the opposite direction.

It’s a way of life that Scott’s Branch students aren’t reluctant to talk about or shy to question. “It’s back in the past,” Quantae said about Summerton. “The only time you see a black and white person in the same place is [in the town’s only] grocery store. I don’t know what’s wrong with everybody.”