Modjeska Simkins School Spring Session 2025

Classes are held every Monday (except Memorial Day) 6:30–8:30pm on Zoom and in-person at GROW, 1340 Elmwood Ave. in Columbia.

Sunday Deep Dives (in blue) are held at 4pm online and at GROW. The programs are optional for students and open to the public.

March 1

Orientation: Introductions, class protocols, course outline and expectations. Students are strongly encouraged to attend in person.

March 3

Class 1 — Stolen land. Stolen people. Stolen History.

Guest Presenter: Professor Chris Judge, USC Native American Study Center

The first half of the class will be led by Chris Judge, who will cover early human history in this part of the world we now call South Carolina. Dr. Robert Greene II, lead instructor of the Modjeska School, will take us from the advanced civilizations of ancient Africa up to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. (Later in the semester, Mr. Judge will host Sunday programs to expand the discussion to include modern history and culture of Native South Carolinians. Details to be announced.)

Dr. Burnette Gallman, a nationally renowned expert on ancient Afrika, will host a series of classes for a deep dive into a fascinating and often-obscured history. These classes are on Zoom only, and are open to the public. Registration details to be announced. 

March 10

Class 2 — South Carolina shapes a nation. Colonial era to statehood

This session reveals how the slave owners who represented South Carolina during the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia ensured that the new nation would allow slavery. The state’s delegation of plantation owners  also managed to see thousands of enslaved families counted in the Census as 3/5th of a white person in order to increase the state’s power in Congress and the Electoral College. 

March 17

Class 3 — Nullification, Disunion, Secession, War

The Nullification Crisis was the first serious conflict of the Southern agricultural economy, dependent on enslaved labor, versus the industrializing Northern economy. Much of today’s history rhymes with the few years preceding Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, when the nation was riven over slavery. South Carolina took the point in defending the “peculiar institution,” and continued to weigh in well above its natural weight on the wrong side of the national devide. 

Sunday, March 23

Deeper Dive with Fergus Bordewich, nationally acclaimed historian and author of Klan Wars, the first publication to detail the 1877 use of the 14th Amendment’s Insurrection Clause and the arrest of hundreds of white terrorists in South Carolina. Mr. Bordewich will be in-person at GROW. 

March 24

Class 4 — Reconstruction

Guest Presenter: Dr. Vernon Burton, SC native and Emeritus professor at Clemson and the University of Illinois

More than 600,000 died in the four years of war following Citadel cadets opening fire on Fort Sumter in 1861. By the end of that year, thousands of enslaved people were freed in the Lowcountry. By 1865, a majority of the state’s population was freed. This ushered in a period of political equity and inclusion. It was a bright moment in history that came to a swift and violent end. Dr. Greene will be joined by Dr. Burton, who is a prominant Reconstruction historian.

Sunday March 30

Deeper Dive with UVA professor, Dr. Justine  Hill-Edwards, author of Origins of Capitalism in Colonial South Carolina and the recently released Savings and Trust: The rise and betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank. Hill-Edwards’ critically acclaimed work offers key context for understanding the economic plight of the formerly enslaved, racial capitalism, the racial wealth gap, and reparations.  

March 31

Class 5 — “Redemption” of white supremacy

Just after the Civil War, whites in South Carolina were seeing their fortunes “redeemed” by the terrorism of organized racist violence. Some 150 years before the Jan. 6 rioters were convicted under the Insurrection Clause of the 14th amendment, in 1877 more than 600 white terrorists in Upstate South Carolina were rounded up and jailed under the same charges. The history textbook used in the state’s schools between the 1840s through the 1970s called Reconstruction a worse tragedy than the war, and praised the Klan for redeeming civility.

April 7

Class 6 — The Constitution of 1895

Guest Presenter: Dr. Jennifer Taylor, Assistant Professor of Public History at Duquesne University

The 1895 Constitution restored white supremacy, codified racism, was never ratified  by the voters, but remains the law of our land. While slavery was illegal, white supremacy and restrictive Black Codes defined reality in the old South. Dr. Greene will be joined by Dr. Taylor, who earned her Ph.D. at USC and specializes in the tensions inherent in public history interpretations. Her recent scholarship explores the ways in which Reconstruction history has been contested and commemorated in South Carolina.

Sunday, April 13

Modjeska Monteith Simkins — a closer look. We will watch video clips and listen to select pieces of oral history to hear Ms. Simkins in her own words. A panel of people historians and activists who worked with her will offer a more complete picture of the Columbia icon for whom our school is named. Details TBA.

April 14

Class 7 — Jim Crow settles in, socialism rises, and resistance to war brings a Red scare

Months after South Carolina’s new Constitution deeply constricted Black citizenship, Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise speech clarified the difference between Washington’s acceptance of segregation and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois’ demands for social and political equality. Manifest Destiny runs out of continent to conquer, and goes global with imperialist ventures. This class takes us through the WWI, the first Red Scare, the Depression, the Bonus Army marching on Washington, and FDR’s New Deal. Striking workers massacred in South Carolina leads to passage of the National Labor Relations Act. 

April 21: Class 8 — Separate and unequal

Guest Presenter: Cecil Cahoon, former school teacher, a 20-year National Education Association employee, and SC Progressive Network Board member

In 1898, the US Supreme ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation as long as separate facilities for Blacks and whites were equal. The decision legitimized institutionalized racism in South Carolina until Thurgood Marshall argued the Briggs v. Elliott case (which he wrote in Modjeska Simkins’ kitchen) in the Supreme Court in 1954. We will explore the lingering manifestations of institutionalized racism that continue to keep our state at the bottom of life quality indexes. 

Sunday, April 27

Deeper Dive with Armand Derfner, nationally renowned civil rights attorney

Mr. Derfner, a Charleston resident, will discuss the US Supreme Court’s systemic betrayal of civil rights and the rulings favoring corporations’ rights over individual liberties. Derfner co-authored the recently released book Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court, with distinguished historian Dr. Vernon Burton.

April 28

Class 9 — It can’t happen here, can it?

This class will explore the facts and implications of the second national Red Scare, including the “Lavender Scare” and the beginnings of HUAC. We’ll discuss the rise of homegrown fascism and the Popular Front response to it.

May 5

Class 10 — South Carolina’s militant human rights movement

Guest Presenter: Dr. Erik Gellman, UNC history professor and author of Death Blow to Jim Crow, the National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights 

Modjeska Simkins’ leadership roles with the Southern Negro Youth Congress in the 1940s contributed to the high watermark of militant activism in the United States. After she was red-baited and drummed out of the SC NAACP, the organization in which she and her mother had invested their lives, she started the Richland County Citizens Committee and continued her work on her own terms. Dr. Gellman has allowed the Modjeska School to include in our study guide the chapter he wrote on the 1946 meeting of the Southern Negro Youth Congress in Columbia.

May 12

Class 11 — Losing hearts, minds, and empires

We’ll review the long list of dictatorial regimes established in the name of democracy and free enterprise. Anti-colonial revolutions saw changes in how our country extracted wealth and globalization de-industrialized America. We will talk about the Vietnam War and the surprising role that South Carolina played in ending it.

May 19

Class 12 — Feminist and SC LGBTQ+ resistance then and now

Guest Presenters: Dr. Ed Madden, former director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina and Annie Boiter-Jolley, adunct professor at USC

Two experts will lead our discussion, offering a brief history and an analysis of what has been won — and lost. What can the history of feminist and queer organizing teach us that we can use in this current moment? In a culture in which identities are separated, stigmatized, and targeted, how do we reimagine alliances?

June 2

Class 13 — Social/political theory and practice

Ours is the world’s only industrial democracy with a two-party system driven by corporate and monied interests. Is there a better way?

Sunday June 8

Screening of the 2009 documentary Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre

The hour-long film that brings to light the story of the attack by state troopers on a demonstration in Orangeburg, South Carolina — leaving three students dead and 28 injured. 

June 9

Class 14 — Rise of the New Right and Left

When white supremacy and overt racism became socially unacceptable, the Christian right shifted their organizing focus to abortion. They played a dominat role in state politics that continues to hold sway on the majority party. The New Left, as it manifested in South Carolina after the civil rights movement, thought that the radical revolution of values was right around the corner. They are still waiting. 

June 16

Class 15 — Effective citizenship in a plutocracy

This class examines strategies and tactics to make meaningful change in our rigid social and political realities. We’ll dissect the rules and regulations, and explore ways around them.

June 23

Class 16 — Living our values and building community

Students share how they plan to put into practice what they have learned.  

June 28

Graduation! Students and their families will share a meal and celebrate the graduates as they receive their diplomas.