(melodic music) - [Beatrice] No one should be left behind, that's stupid.

- [Steve] Putting a stop to substandard places of learning for black students created a deep cultural divide.

- Schools remained segregated.

The white people who were in power in 1950 remained in power and they began to penalize.

- [Steve] Harsh penalties targeting African-Americans who depended on farming.

- There was a lot of times we had to drop the price on the shelf $2 below, a dollar below, to get rid of it.

- [Steve] Moving a community forward became a legal goal, however, making schools equal in South Carolina meant taking a stand.

- Your job was gone - [Steve] Seeking fairness meant signing a petition and going to court.

- Even if they don't want to integrate, at least give us an opportunity for a decent education.

- [Steve] Righting past wrongs from decades ago, remains an ongoing challenge in the 21st century.

- We have a lot of more work to do.

- [Steve] Fruits of their survival can be found in the marketplace but the journey from the fields to family tables hasn't been an easy ride.

- Times that they wouldn't buy from the black farmers.

- [Steve] Making it in many instances meant relying on a much higher power.

- So I guess through it all we were blessed through God and God always look out for us.

- Cotton is the currency that made many fortunes here in South Carolina.

But during the 1950s, this exported crop brought profits to one group and pain as well as suffering to another.

Hello and welcome, I'm Steve Crump.

This is a story of the haves and the havenots, the haves who wanted to maintain the status quo and the havenots hoping to improve their lot in life.

It is intersected by race, politics, social justice, education, as well as agriculture.

For African American families who were disenfranchised, farming has been a tough road for them in life and in many instances they found hardship at the harvest.

(melodic music) - Thank you very much, have a great day.

- Thanks, hope you get rid of everything today.

- So do I.

- [Steve] By all accounts, their numbers are small and dwindling, but this is a group not willing to give up.

African American farmers in South Carolina who bring their produce to market after surviving year round seasons of uncertainty.

- And we had a hard time.

- [Steve] Hard times remembered by Ernest Mazyck, who has set up shop at the State Farmer's Market in Columbia and similar stories are echoed at Charleston's Francis Marion Park by those who depend on making ends meet from what comes out of the soil.

Producing and selling fruits and vegetables for Sandra Freeman, as well as her family, goes back some four generations.

- And some years are good.

Some years are very shaky.

- [Steve] Joseph Fields has worked the fields in the coastal low country most of his life.

- But I'm the third generation.

I've been doing the farming since the sixties.

- [Steve] When he started planting crops in the 1960s, African-American farmers in parts of South Carolina during previous decades, cope with pressure from Mother Nature as well as the banks.

- They won't lend farmers no money and when they do, they wanted everything mortgaged, including your house and all.

- [Steve] Black sharecroppers and landowners in this state survived on less than a level playing field.

Government ordered segregation in Walterboro was a given for the Tuskegee airmen before they headed off to World War II and in Columbia, Sarah Mae Flemming garnered her share of public attention by doing what Rosa Parks did some 17 months earlier in 1954, she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger.

That same year brought the Brown versus Board ruling issued by the Supreme Court, with its roots in Clarendon County, South Carolina.

- Well I think it's important to note that the struggle for equal access in schools, which is the original thrust of what is now known as Briggs v Elliot, that was led by farmers.

It was led by working class men and women in a small, rural, poor community.

- [Steve] From farmers fields to the highest court in the land, fighting for fairness in America's classrooms went on for years, handled by the legendary Thurgood Marshall.

Litigation connected to the Brown versus Board suit was collectively bundled into five cases.

The Briggs case outta Clarendon County in South Carolina's low country set the stage.

- It was the first case filed in Supreme Court.

It is also the case that was first heard by a district court.

- [Steve] J.A.

Delaine Jr's father, Reverend Joseph Delaine, sounded the trumpet against blatant inequities in public education.

He was among the organizers bringing together Harry and Eliza Briggs as well as more than a dozen plaintiffs who decided to take on school Superintendent R.M.

Elliot.

One of those signing the petition that moved the lawsuit forward was a teenage student by the name of Beatrice Brown Rivers.

- Can you imagine still having dilapidated schools for black kids and outdoor toilets and outdoor fountains and having to play basketball and outdoors and not in a gym?

All those things in, can you imagine still going through that?

- [Steve] Through the efforts of his one man civil rights museum and a series of publications, civil rights photographer Cecil Williams, has chronicled the antique conditions endured by black students.

He recalls how parents faced their share of organized pushback.

- Sometimes loans were called in at banks, mortgages foreclosed, everything the community could throw at the people that were involved with the Briggs versus Elliot case.

- I guess we as a people thought we saw relief.

- I hope that that made me a better person.

- They kept names and they went after individuals in these communities who were well known as activists or as champions of civil rights.

And as their names became exposed, they faced consequences.

- [Steve] Case in point, Reverend Joseph Delaine.

- Sometimes I think as that my father was a good man for pulling things apart and problem solving.

And then again, I look at it and I think, that he was more of a holy man for honesty and truth which you know, did not always work in his favor.

- [Steve] The nine Supreme Court justices who decided the case, ordered the ruling be carried out with all deliberate speed, but the white power structure in Clarendon County scrambled for legal loopholes.

- So that '54 decision, which evolved from about almost 10 years of court decisions and actions here in South Carolina.

- After the 1954 decision by the United States Supreme Court, academies all over South Carolina start developing, some school districts even closed their schools rather than be open to the Supreme Courts and governed by the Supreme Court's decision, that segregation in public education is unconstitutional.

- [Steve] However, changes in the law didn't immediately alter the academic calendar for black students.

- If you're in rural South Carolina, it was not all that unusual for you to have a four or five month school year, by law.

You didn't go to school until all the cotton was gathered out of the fields.

- [Steve] Meanwhile, galvanized retaliation against black farmers severely altered their way of life.

- Oh, you'd have to go back and put yourself in the position of these people that signed that petition.

Poor people who had small farms, who depended upon the white merchant to sell them fertilizer, sell them groceries, sell them the things that they needed to make it on those farms or people who had jobs working for white people that lost them.

And these, some of these small farmers they couldn't get the fertilizer, they couldn't get the things that they needed to produce a crop.

- They needed equipment, they needed funds, they needed loans.

And typically they would, people would respond in kind.

But during the height of the legal campaign around what is today Briggs versus Elliot, you begin to see land owners who watch their crops rot in the fields.

- I can only imagine how frustrating and upsetting it is.

- At times there were words passed around, don't go to Lake City to a market to sell your products.

Go to Dillon or other cases where, go to Savannah or head into North Carolina and take yourself if you can afford to take it up there.

- To be a farmer is already a struggle, right, but to have to drive how many ever hours to accept pennies on a dollar for what you, for what you've put your hard work into is demoralizing.

It's, you know, taxing.

- [Steve] Pressure not only came in places like Clarendon County.

Tension was also endured across rural communities including Sumter, Elloree in Orangeburg, where black farmers who were not connected to the Briggs lawsuit also faced new found obstacles.

- I can remember people who used to pick cotton in the fields here.

- This field?

- This field, there's the sack on the back, dragging the sack, picking cotton by hand.

- Orangeburg County is where Nathaniel Rhodes makes a living on the land that's been in his family for decades.

- For us, it been rough.

It been a good, it been a challenging struggle for the black, you know, they had to fight to get where we are today.

- [Steve] His family farmed this property in the 1950s when African Americans who grew crops faced discrimination.

- Who owned the banks, who owned the gas stations, who controlled the feed stores?

They were the same people who were part of Briggs v Elliot.

They were the Elliots.

- The wounds are still deep.

There are still certain segments of our population who will not admit that there was a case, Briggs versus Elliot.

- Problems existed among people that were supporting Briggs v Elliot by people who claimed that they were our friends, but they were, yet they were members of the KKK, the White Citizens Council.

- It's really something that you'll never forget.

There's no way we'll ever forget what happened here.

No one could ever forget who was alive at that time.

You can never forget.

- [Steve] Survival for disenfranchised families meant fighting back non-violently.

- We were fortunate that we were working for a weekly and but the Pittsburgh Courier was like a daily because it had, though it was a weekly, it had a day of publication for all over the country.

- [Steve] Back in 1957, the late Alex Rivera of the African American owned and operated Pittsburgh Courier, traveled to Africa with Vice President Richard Nixon.

But two years earlier, he scored a front page scoop that inspired a national call to action.

The September 1955 edition, the Courier, spelled out the pain endured by black families during the so-called Carolina squeeze.

- The role of the Black press cannot be exaggerated because the White press was not covering this.

- [Guest] Had it not been for the Black press, in fact, that what we were doing was being carried across the pages of America.

- [Steve] Publications from White Citizens Councils attempted to sway opinions.

An article appearing in the 1955 New Republic magazine titled "The White Folks Fight Back" carries a mean-spirited passage.

It says, "The squeeze is the big stick.

To apply it to the Negro, don't gin his cotton, don't renew his bank note.

Fire him from his job."

They did.

- And it was getting hot in the South.

Even though you had that monumental case, there now was a determined effort by the Klan by the White Citizens Council, by influential politicians, to make sure that whatever momentum was being gained is thwarted.

- I agree, it shows that prejudice was rampant and not hiding.

- They would be met with great racism and discrimination.

- And their names were not hidden.

- They began to penalize.

They began to penalize families who dared to imagine a better future for themselves.

And so many of those families who lent their names to petition and to lawsuits, they faced reprisals.

- Our parents lost everything.

Their jobs, many of 'em had to leave town.

They couldn't stay here because they couldn't earn a living.

So they lost everything.

But I still think it's a fight we should have had.

- Mr. Briggs, one of the leading signers of the petition, of course he had to move his family out of Clarendon County, later came back, but he had to move.

And of course Reverend Delaine was virtually run out of the county.

Can't underestimate the impact that Reverend Delaine had on this entire nation because he was willing to stand up.

- There was a great deal going on here.

There were teachers in Elloree who had been fired from their jobs for being members of the NAACP.

- Well, it was all over that way, all over the state.

There was a law there that said that if you were a member of an NAACP, you could not get a job teaching.

- [Steve] One month after the story broke in the Pittsburgh Courier, it was picked up by Jet Magazine.

The article not only focused on the so-called squeeze by putting families at risk, it also provided a powerful narrative demonstrating how black-owned businesses were caught in the crossfire.

Many of the images in that era came from photojournalist, Cecil Williams.

- [Cecil] I have a picture that shows James Sultan in front of his filling station.

James Sultan was not afraid of anything.

- My father was a cerebral thinker and an active doer.

My father and my uncle together ran a service station and a garage.

The first struggle they had was with what was then known as Standard Oil because they were being pressed to not be involved in the Civil Rights Movement and they rejected that pressure.

- [Steve] The Sultan's family business was in Orangeburg, a community which over time evolved as a hotbed for protest largely because of student activism from its two HBCUs, Claflin, and South Carolina State Universities.

- [Cecil] The business that also owned Coca-Cola stopped delivering Coca-Colas to James Sultan's filling station and many other products, where he got his tires from.

All of them tried to withhold their products to put pressure on James Sultan.

- When the main company would deliver oil, you'd be last on the list.

And so they were always waiting to get their supply so they could make their deliveries.

Their business was put on a list by the White Citizens Council and others of businesses to be boycotted, not to be patronized.

What the segregationists didn't anticipate was the counter movement to that.

- [Steve] James Sultan Sr. turned the tables.

- They came up with their own list of companies where they encouraged African Americans not to do business.

- [Steve] On that list, more than 20 businesses and products alerting shoppers to boycott items including Shell Oil and Lay's potato chips.

Also mentioned in the Jet Magazine article was an urgent request to send food, clothing, and money to Mrs. A.W.

Simkins, the state's NAACP secretary.

Mrs. A.W.

Simkins was known to many as Modjeska Simkins.

- My mother grew up around Modjeska.

My mother grew up in same neighborhood that Modjeska grew up in.

One she was a fireball and she was accompanied by several other members of the movement.

- [Steve] Applauded for owning a hotel and the Victory Savings Bank in Columbia, it was no mistake that correspondence connected to the relief effort be sent to her home at 2025 Marion Street, blocks from downtown Columbia.

Today it's known as the Modjeska Simkins house.

- And so these letters are coming from around the country to support the individuals in South Carolina.

Dear Miss Simkins, here is a small donation.

Please take it to help those people of Clarendon County, yours truly Anston Stokes.

- [Steve] 10 years after the Supreme Court decision came the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Progressive, yes, but it didn't erase many past wrongs.

- Some people lost their lives.

Many people lost their jobs and their farms because they were being pressed to not be involved in the Civil Rights Movement and they rejected that pressure and they became involved anyway.

My uncle and my father both paid dearly for that decision and they paid continuously as the fifties moved into the sixties and so forth.

- I'll take care of you, don't worry.

- [Steve] Fast forward into the 21st century.

Farmers like Ernest Mazyck in Columbia take pride in having survived.

- It's so hard, one time bank won't give it, but he ain't give up, keep going, that's all.

That's life.

- [Interviewer] And that's the message for young black farmers today.

- That's right, yes sir.

- You had to know the market.

- Nathaniel Roads was the center of attention when Congressman Jim Clyburn and Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack discussed loan forgiveness at his Orangeburg County farm during 2021.

Meanwhile, Rhodes continues growing the family business but these days he feels black farmers are constantly under siege.

- For them to get better, we gotta fight, fight this, continue to fight.

- [Steve] Remaining relevant requires being innovative.

Call it a greenhouse or a hothouse, but for Preston Clinkscales of Anderson, South Carolina, he farms in what's known as a high tunnel.

- 30 feet wide, 126 feet long.

And what a high tunnel is, it's intended to extend the season.

- [Steve] Before the summer harvest came to an end, tomatoes, greens and squash flourished in this controlled environment.

However, behind the scenes, Clinkscales has opened his tunnel to a new breed of agricultural specialists from HBCU institutions.

- So we've actually hosted one workshop with South Carolina State.

- [Steve] In South Carolina, farming communities have thrived through the work of African-Americans despite life altering risk.

- And you know they were afraid.

You know they had misgivings, but they stood strong because they had the intestinal fortitude to do it and the courage to do it.

- [Steve] Courage is the name of a permanent exhibit at Charlotte's Johnson C. Smith University.

It's spells out the plight of the Delaine family who survived abject violence, showcases the plaintiffs in the Briggs case and brings attention to the Jet Magazine article.

Included in this display is a replica of food packages designed to show what concerned families sent to those in need during the so-called Carolina squeeze.

- Some of it traveled not just nationally, as far away as Los Angeles, but also a version traveled internationally to South Africa and the world was interested.

The world is interested because this history has helped redefine what it means to be an American.

- Newfound interest is growing from projects carried out under the watch of Preston CLinkscales, but he's learned lasting profits are hard to come by.

- So there's a lot of money to be made and we just have to kind of carve out our own market share.

- [Steve] While weekend mornings at the Farmer's Market in Charleston provides a revenue stream for this group of survivors, lessons from the past for Joseph Fields and his family means enduring risk, both seen and unseen, going back to the mid 20th century.

- Farming is a business not a hobby.

You know, if you wanna do it.

- According to the US Department of Agriculture, just 2% of our nation's farms are owned and operated by African American families.

Still in some years the numbers tend to go up.

Many may wonder why stay in this game if times have been so hard.

For some, it is a labor of love and for others it is preserving a rich part of a very historic past.

That's Hardship at the Harvest from the Cotton Hills Farm in Lowrys, South Carolina.

I'm Steve Crump, thanks so much for joining us.

(clapping) (melodic music)