♪ opening music ♪ Welcome to "This Week In South Carolina," I'm Gavin Jackson.

Education is still the focus of many policy debates in South Carolina and around the country.

From school vouchers to curriculum debates and book bans.

But to understand where we are, we need to understand where we came from.

And that's why I'm joined by Derek Black.

He's the director of the Constitutional Law Center at the University of South Carolina School of Law, and he has a new book out titled "Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy."

Derek, welcome back.

Derek Black> Yeah, thanks for having me.

Always a pleasure.

Gavin Jackson> So this is a fascinating read.

Thoroughly researched, as your books are.

One that really provides a lot of great foundation for modern day discussions that we're going to have and debates on education policy.

But the focus is on Black literacy and how that was so critical to enslaved people moving up in the world and, that, you know, in a world that really did nothing to help them go forward.

And we're talking about before the Civil War and after the Civil War, especially.

But I want to start this book at the beginning, where you started with Denmark Vesey and his attempt to lead a slave revolt in Charleston in 1822.

Tell us about Vesey.

Tell us about what drove him, to start to lead this revolt that didn't come to fruition, but the ramifications of it.

Derek Black> Yeah.

I mean, he is just a remarkable figure.

Put away the issues, the policy.

This is a guy that was born into slavery and was working on the side with the blessings of his enslaver and earned enough money to start buying lottery tickets.

And he buys a lottery ticket, he wins the lottery ticket in the Bay Street lottery, that built the Bay Street, you know, in Charleston, and buys his own freedom.

I mean, what a story.

But he then, uses his free time after that to really drill down and reading.

And he's reading all the newspapers.

Charleston was a heavy literary society city, one of the oldest libraries in the country.

He's at wash and books.

And, you know, he's reading these congressional debates.

And I think the one that really sort of caught his attention was the, the debates around 1820 and whether Missouri is going to come into the country as a free or slave state.

And I think, given what he knew of American ideas, he he kind of thought Congress is going to say, no more.

This is the end of things.

But when Congress says, no, Missouri's coming as a slave state, I think his hopes are dashed.

South Carolina had also been restricting, the freedom of free people of color.

And so he was upset about that as well.

So, in short, he takes his literacy and starts, sharing the good news in the Bible, a different version of the Bibles, the Israelites, all of those stories that weren't being taught and says, look, you know, we need our freedom, too.

Haiti had recently, declared its independence.

He writes a letter to the president of Haiti.

Will you receive us?

But the real thesis of that chapter, much of the book, was that it's his literacy that makes all that possible.

And so he brings together, purportedly, a list of thousands of free and enslaved people in Charleston who are ready to revolt.

And it's really only a last minute slip of the tongue, that leads to that revolt being thwarted.

Gavin Jackson> And why did you start with this story?

I mean, it was, I mean it is fascinating, especially for folks who don't know about about Denmark Vesey, and what was going on in Charleston at that time.

But, why this story?

Why why did this captivate you so much?

Derek Black> Yeah.

I mean, there's this general narrative you ask people, you know, when did Black people learn to read and write and they say, oh, you know, after the Civil War, because the assumption is it was always criminalized.

It was always prohibited.

And what I learned through researching the book is that that's just not true.

You know, in Charleston in the late 1700s, in the early 1800s, there were schools operating out in the open on the peninsula, educating both free and enslaved Black people.

I mean, this was amazing to me.

But after Denmark Vesey's revolt, you know, there becomes a lot of tension about this ability to read and write.

But even as late as 18, you know, I think it was 1830, sometime in the 1830s, the Catholic Church in Charleston had restarted.

It's kind of, people forgot about Vesey.

They restart, a church and a mob descends on them after some disagreement about other issues there and insists that they close it down.

And that's the end of of Black literacy in Charleston, in the state criminalized, etc.

And, and you see this happening in other states as well.

Gavin Jackson> And he was also using the Bible, like you're saying, to kind of go against a lot of those the teachings in the, in the ways of folks justifying slavery to and kind of using their words against them in the fight to motivate folks to rise up, essentially.

Derek Black> Yeah, I mean, it's almost hard to believe, but but Denmark Vesey was, you know, he was a free man, had a little bit of money in his pocket, and he would walk around Charleston saying, and, you know, on the streets, you know, why don't they teach you this part of the Bible?

You know, why don't they teach you about God being on the side of the Israelites?

Not on the side of the Pharaoh.

And so he's taking that argument and trying to motivate people to say, look, God's on our side.

This is not what's destined for us.

And you can imagine that's certainly a message that that speaks to folks.

Gavin Jackson> And then, of course, it did not come to fruition, that revolt.

But it did have a lot of ramifications.

Tell us about what eventually happened.

You said a slip of the tongue kind of led to that being derailed there.

But also, you know, some of the ripple effects as a result.

Derek Black> Yeah.

Well, I mean, first of all, the story gets out, you know, they end up arresting a huge number of Black people and putting them on trial.

And Vesey ends up being executed.

But he defends himself at trial, another mark of his sort of power, of his literacy that he's drawn out a lot of arguments there, actually, before we even applied, the right of confrontation of witnesses against you to the States, he's saying you're bringing all these people here saying this stuff about me.

I have a right to the United States Constitution to confront them and question them.

So quite remarkable.

But from there, you know, there's a couple other sort of big names, David Walker out of Boston who apparently had met Denmark Vesey at one point early in life in Charleston.

He writes this, what was the most radical Black manifesto in history, calling on Black people to rise up and seize their freedom.

But he said, the first step to freedom is actually mental freedom, and that comes through education.

So, he starts shipping that south and it shows up in Savannah, Georgia, and the authorities are beside themselves three days after they find it, they criminalize Black literacy in Georgia.

Shortly thereafter, North Carolina criminalized it.

So, you know, the south's on fire again with this other guy using his literacy to try to inspire people.

Gavin Jackson> I was going to say, what kind of fire did the Denmark create for some folks?

Obviously there's that.

There's some other uprisings, too.

What was like, I guess the, the benefit of what happened to him?

Derek Black> Well, you know, to be quite honest, he dies in relative obscurity.

Amongst many circles.

But Charleston trying to defend itself, it was trying to say, well, we gave him a trial.

It was fair.

And so there is a trial transcript written up and reprinted and shipped around the country, to try to say, look, we followed all the rules.

You know, he's a bad, bad guy.

But then, the officials go, wait a minute.

If Black people can read, they might read this.

And so, they burn all the copies of that.

And actually, when the north, I mean, Union soldiers come into South Carolina, You know, that report on Denmark Vesey had not been seen for decades, but they found it under lock and key in a few homes.

And so it becomes that that actual copy, I think it was found in Hilton Head, I believe, and is now, I think, at Harvard Library, if I remember correctly.

So, yes, the story of him was a secret that needed to be kept as far as southern authorities... Gavin Jackson> Just so it didn't lead to more folks doing what he did?

Like Nat Turner?

Like we saw?

Derek Black> Yeah, like Nat Turner.

I mean, Nat Turner grows up in a very rural area.

And I think that really the only thing that he read was the Bible, but he read it well and his is the largest, most successful slave revolt.

And so he uses his preaching and his status as a prophet of sorts to inspire a slave revolt there.

The south was convinced that he had read David Walker's report, and that somehow or another, he also knew about Vesey, but, you know, the history doesn't really bear that out.

I think he just really was inspired, to his freedom and also that disconnect between the fact that, you know, he was smarter and more literate than a lot of other White folks and that sort of dichotomy, that tension, in his world versus others, I think he just couldn't take it anymore.

But after his revolt, you know, so the story goes in my book, that really is the sort of end of literacy in the south.

As a result of that, Virginia clamps down on it.

The rest of the southern states clamp down on it.

And, you know, we can talk about if you want to, censorship becomes the next thing after that.

Because his revolt did lead to 61 people have been killed indiscriminately in South Hampton, Virginia.

And that really captivated the attention of the country, too, because he was also, like you said, a very intelligent person, but was really focused on the Bible, and its teachings.

But you start seeing southerners blaming the the north for this, you know, radicalizing freemen, they'd say, and enslaved people then, you know, so eventually led to some substantial crackdowns on people of color, abolitionists, and the Constitution, including the freedom of the press.

So, like, tell us about, that censorship movement and how that was the next, I guess, shoe to drop in trying to clamp down on Black literacy.

Yeah.

Freedom of the press, freedom of any sort of reading becomes a big issue after his revolt.

So, you know, they call themselves anti-slavery groups at that point, rather than abolitionists.

They just didn't like the way slavery was proceeding.

What we would do, you know, that could be up to debate.

But, so those early newspapermen operating out of New York and Boston, they decided that a good way to, needle southern politicians was to ship copies of their newspapers to them in the south.

And, as you might imagine, the Charlestonians politicians did not take too kindly of it.

So, one of the letters was delivered in 1835, and I think, I don't know if it was April, but, they deliver it and one of the politicians sees it.

You got to be kidding me.

The United States mail delivered this anti-slavery newspaper.

So, by that evening, they had broken into the Charleston post office, pulled out all the mail, and then were planning, a big event on, on the army grounds there later behind the Citadel, which actually was created as a response to Denmark Vesey.

So, that night they put up a, the next day, they put up a signal balloon, they burn all the newspapers, on a town square.

They hanged William Lloyd Garrison and others in effigy, and say that they're not going to allow the mail to be delivered in South Carolina anymore.

This sets off a huge national problem.

You've got southerner as president, Andrew Jackson being told.

I mean, he's no he's no sympathizer with slavery, but he believes in federal power.

And so you can't just not let people deliver the mail.

So this stretches out over the course of weeks, you know, is the mail going to be delivered in the south or not?

Can they break into post offices and steal the papers?

During that time, vigilance committees all across the south formed and say these newspapers are not going to enter the south.

And so they kept being shipped.

But they were not delivered.

Gavin Jackson> Yeah.

Again, trying to get that word out.

And it was just kind of falling on deaf ears, too.

And so I guess that's when, folks in the north, maybe recalibrate what their approach is trying to destabilize a little bit of this was, but, looking at South Carolina's John C. Calhoun, who was vice president to Andrew Jackson, as well as John Quincy Adams during 1825 through 1832, he was very influential in how, you know, the south was essentially led to war, seeing that as the only way to deal with slavery, not in a peaceful way, but, actually having to go to war.

There's a part in your book, there's a letter by Francis Lieber to Calhoun that was not sent to him, but it says "If you fear discussion, if you maintain the south cannot afford it, that every man who differs from your community or who sees deficiencies in the institution must be hushed, then you admit at the same time that the whole institution is to be kept up to violence only."

So, kind of a powerful little note there coming back from the 1800s.

It still kind of has some reverberations in modern day.

We can talk more about that, but still want to look at this historical context.

Derek Black> Yeah.

I mean, I think the, and Lieber was the crown jewel of the University of South Carolina, for those who don't know him.

But, they brought him here, world renowned scholar, to try to elevate the university.

And he wrote these anonymous letters he was going to send to Calhoun.

And I think, you know, people told him he'll find out that it's not going to be safe for you.

But I think the lesson of Lieber is, and others like him was there was a great diversity of thought.

I mean, you know, people on both sides of the aisle, so to speak, deny this.

You know, it's all this sort of simple picture.

There was diversity of thought amongst not just White people, but people who enslaved others about how this institution should operate, its economic viability, whether you should allow enslaved people to read or not, there is a lot of, you know, folks said, look, this is my duty, you know, as a Christian to share the Bible.

But what happened between really the end of of Nat Turner and in the 40s was this, refusal to tolerate anyone thinking different than the status quo, I mean, in North Carolina in 1829, and this will shock probably a lot of people, there were 1200 or 1600, one of the two members of the North Carolina Anti-Slavery society.

The fact that there was even such a society, much less that it had, you know, over 1000 members, is mind blowing.

What's also mind blowing is that eight years later, only 12 people show up to the meeting and it never meets again.

And that's because the doors of freedom to even discuss slavery, to even say, maybe we ought to think about colonization, maybe we ought to think about liberalization, maybe we ought, whatever.

Maybe we ought to allow manumission.

Like, all these things are being stripped away and if you don't agree with the party line, as a White, educated, you know, crown jewel of U.S.C.

your life is in danger.

Gavin Jackson> And we did see again the Civil War come to fruition there in 1861.

You take us through the Civil War, and I find this to be always the most fascinating, portion of our history when it comes to that.

And that's what happened in Port Royal on the Sea Islands, becoming a safe place for education for formerly enslaved people.

You talked about that in your 2020 book, Schoolhouse Burning.

But tell us what transpired during this time and how that became, somewhat of a crack in the door to help get education to formerly enslaved people?

Derek Black> Yeah.

I mean, these stories of what happened in the South Carolina Sea Islands, are I mean, I'm getting chills right now thinking about I mean, it's just it is a unique moment in American history in which, you know, Black people get their first taste of physical freedom south of the Mason-Dixon line.

And the very first thing they want after that is to learn to read and write.

And so what had happened, was there was Fort Monroe, this sort of small little place in northern, or off the coast of Virginia that had a little school community, but they were surrounded by Confederates.

But in the Sea Islands, there were 10,000, newly freed or no longer enslaved folks after the Battle of Port Royal and not a White, you know, not a White person, I mean, they they actually said there was like 10 or 11 Whites that remained after that.

So there's a Union soldiers in them.

And so this becomes the experiment and freedom.

And these missionaries were called down, by, Edward Pierce, who was in charge of the Freedman's affairs there.

And they come down and they start schools on Saint Helena's Island, and the other islands in Port Royal, and they just begin to explode in population.

The Black population begins to move in relationship to where those schools are.

And those who don't move are getting on rowboats in the morning and rowing across the bay, you know, relocating themselves to find the best teacher amongst the schools, you know, there.

And, you know, we've got some great, great diaries, by Laura Towne, for instance.

And others that, just sort of talk about those early days of folks, you know, getting their right to read and learn.

Those schools become the foundation of public education in the state of South Carolina, as well as elsewhere.

They also become the breeding ground for the leaders who are going to become, you know, state secretary of, you know, of education, or you know, representatives, U.S. representatives.

Like, there's so much vibrancy that grows out of those schools.

It's really just an amazing story.

Gavin Jackson> Yeah.

Then following the Civil War and the end of it in 1865 through reconstruction.

There were a lot of high hopes there, especially down there on the Sea Islands, about what could be, but that really started to fade in the 1870s when we saw southern fears of Black political power growing because they were becoming educated.

They were able to, you know, get into the state House and rise through the ranks and have a majority there.

So, that's when we also start to hear about compulsory education, funding education, that's being incorporated into constitutions there.

So by the turn of the century, though, it kind of had this idea of public education for all, which you're right as a Black idea had become public education for some.

What was, conceived as a means to eradicate the vestiges of slavery had become a tool for perpetuating them.

So, tell us about how that transition, again, really did not come to fruition.

Derek Black> Yeah.

I mean, what happened, as I put the pieces together, is all those fears about Black literacy during slavery, those same arguments are trotted out after the Civil War.

Now, initially when the Union is here, that's not enough to stop the project.

But once the union retreats, those same fears about, Black literacy come back.

They find that they can't eliminate the schools because guess what?

There's a lot of, like, low income White families that say, hey, we actually kind of like these public schools.

And they thought that we can't just end schools altogether.

But what we're going to do is segregate those schools and we will fund them unequally and drastically cut the budget.

So, you know, you see this enormous period of expansion, like the number of children enrolled in schools growing exponentially in the decade, following the Civil War.

But after that, you see flatline and you see falling revenues.

So, you know, everyone gets hurt in that process, unfortunately.

Which then takes us up through Jim Crow and then landmark Brown versus Board of Education, 1954, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But then again, still not truly seen.

You know, desegregation in schools in South Carolina, at least until early 1970s at the at the latest, which is basically a generation ago in some respects.

I mean, so how do you start shaping that conversation from, you know, pre-Civil War, Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights Movement to where we are kind of going right now.

Do you see some of those, underpinnings still in play here when we talk about public education?

And we'll get more into this, but just begin that nascent phase right there.

Yeah.

I mean, I sort of line up a couple of ideas.

I mean, there's nothing about today that's like yesterday.

I mean, it'd be wrong for me to say that or like a century ago, but what you see is democracy and opportunity expanding for Black people at 3 or 4 major points in history.

And each time you see that expansion, right, you see that sort of fear of that expansion.

So we move backwards, right.

And what I say in the book to try to connect to the current day is we see, you know, the biggest expansions since the end of the Civil War happening during the Civil Rights Movement, right, from the 60s into the 70s.

But then we, you know, we start to slide backwards again.

So, you know, I think we tried to get another restart on this sort of expansion of the way we teach our kids and make everyone welcome following, you know, the murders of George Floyd and others.

And, you know, for a couple of years you sort of felt this movement, right, to change the way we think about schooling and to change the way we think about, the way we relate with children and each other.

And there were flaws in that.

I'm not saying that was all perfect.

I have my own critiques of some of the ideas we came up during that period, but the backlash against that is enormous.

And so, you know, I think we're living in the backlash to sort of an attempt to take, to step forward.

What I don't know, and when I say in the book is, you know, are these the last dying gasps, of the forces that shut down Black literacy and, you know, in the 1830s in South Carolina or, you know, is this a new, a new onslaught that's really going to drive us back to a worse place than we were just a few years ago?

I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that 90 percent of South Carolinians graduated from the public schools.

I hope 100 percent believe in those schools, whether they graduated from them or not.

And I know that for over two centuries, you know, public education has been a foundation of democracy.

So I think it's something we really have to take seriously, our commitment to those public schools.

Gavin Jackson> And, Derek, we have about five minutes left.

I want to kind of follow up on what you're talking about there, because you do write in the book.

You say something dangerously reminiscent of the pre-Civil War South is happening in education today.

I know that will probably get a lot of attention, but I feel like you're not really prone to hyperbole.

So, can you walk us through what you mean by that?

Derek Black> Yeah.

I mean the one piece of history that we didn't talk.

I mean, I wrote this book and thought, hey, this is a great story.

You know, I love these stories.

But, you know, what does it have to do with today?

And it actually was the 1840s that made this sort of sent the light bulb off in my mind because so, you know, they criminalized Black literacy in, you know, the 20s and early 30s.

You censor the newspapers and the 1835.

And then there's like, there's nothing else to do, Right?

You've shut down Black literacy, you've shut down the newspapers.

But the level of paranoia that persisted after that was such that, you know, southerners started looking for ghosts under rocks.

And, you know, the best example I think of this is the Bose Revue, which was a national magazine published all across the south that, started reviewing textbooks and started finding fault and all these books because there was so much bias in these books.

And I think the most egregious example of the, I think it was a 2 or 3 page review, of this one geography book that was accused of of southern bias because it spent disproportionate time talking about northern crops.

But I it gives you a taste of like, you know, what was going on.

And they said, we need southern books by southern authors coming from southern universities for southern kids and southern values, and nothing else shall be taught in our schools.

And that was the moment in which I said, you know, has this sort of paranoia, gotten hold of us again.

John Calhoun, you know, on the Senate floor saying, you know, slavery can't be spoken of in the halls of Congress because it's injurious, to southern honor, sounds a lot like our concerns that, you know, we're offending, you know, young White children or sort of injuring them by talking about race.

We're not even talking about slavery.

We're talking about racial history.

But, so those things worry me, right?

That we are so paranoid that we don't feel comfortable having open conversations and taking difficult issues seriously.

Gavin Jackson> And we have two minutes left.

And you mentioned about the the corrosive effects of subtle mentions of disunion and coming for, you know, public education.

We're talking about book bans in modern day.

We're talking about school vouchers again.

We just saw the state Supreme court, rule 3 to 2 last fall for, education scholarship trust funds.

They're back now in the in the state House looking at using lottery education lottery dollars to fund private school vouchers.

So, we're still having these debates.

We're still looking at D.E.I.

for example, as the new C.R.T.

There's a lot of concerns about even having these such discussions, even though they're just discussions.

So I'm wondering what you think about the chilling effects of what's going on right now.

And honestly, what do you think is the end goal here?

What do you think you can replace public education with when it's just such a hallmark of our of our nation?

Derek Black> Yeah.

I mean, we can't replace it.

You know, not in any meaningful sense.

I mean, one of the lines that I often tell folks is if our public schools become a place where only poor children go, the public education project is over.

Right?

And that is largely, whether intentional or not, is what vouchers facilitate, right?

Because the vouchers, you know, they don't cover the full cost of private education.

And to be quite honest, our finest, you know, private schools aren't really interested in taking a lot more students, much less are hard to teach students.

So, you know, I worry about the end of the public education project.

I also worry about what kind of world we live in if we all retreat to our separate corners and get our own versions of history or the or the versions we like to hear.

I mean, if schooling becomes Twitter or X or whatever they call it now, I mean, I think that's a dangerous place for society.

Gavin Jackson> Especially with everything being so fragmented.

And of course, everyone just want to listen to what they listen to.

So a lot to think about, a lot to consider.

But that's where we have to leave with.

Derek Black, he's the director of the Constitutional Law Center at the University of South Carolina's School of Law, and he has a new book out titled "Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy."

Derek, thank you so much for joining us.

Derek Black> Thank you.

And for South Carolina E.T.V.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

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