Students in the Modjeska Simkins School’s spring session have been meeting every Monday night and many Sunday afternoons since March 2. The stalwarts who completed the challenging course (not everyone does) celebrated their achievement on Saturday at a commencement ceremony with family, friends, and alumni. This year, 36 students graduated from the school.

It was clear that this session bonded the class, and many of the graduates are already planning their next meetings to talk about projects they want to join or launch. 

“This year’s class was energetic, enthusiastic, and eager,” said lead instructor Dr. Robert Greene II, who teaches history at Claflin University and joined the Modjeska School staff in 2019. “They reminded me why I enjoy doing our version of a Citizenship School that focuses not only on history, but also on the kind of engaged citizenship that learning the true, unabashed history of South Carolina should foster.”

The school is a project of the SC Progressive Network to teach civics and a people’s history of South Carolina. Network board member and Modjeska School graduate Cecil Cahoon delivered the commencement address. “Our state has been the incubator of inhumane ideas, the place where malignant seeds of public policy are germinated for propagation to other capitals of the South and the rest of the nation,” he said. “This is not hyperbole. Doctor Greene and others have identified scores of examples in your Sunday deep dives and Monday evening classes. In example after example, our state has fought above its weight to train its sister states of the South and to infect the nation with more of its peculiar malices — all the way to and including this present moment.”

The antidote is us, an engaged, educated, community of fellow travelers committed to making “good trouble.”

SC Progressive Network Executive Director Brett Bursey said this session of the school has been especially gratifying. “The students’ testimonials at our graduation indicate that the school is working exactly as we had hoped when we launched the school in 2015. Be sure to listen to Cecil Cahoon’s commencement address. He so clearly articulates the essence of the community we are building to win our individual and collective radical revolution of values.”

The students who accepted their diplomas on Saturday shared with each other what the last many months has meant to them.

Josh Dunn said, “It’s been transformative. It’s given me a lot of courage and made a lot of my excuses a lot less palatable, and it made me really fired up.Thank you to everyone who made this experience wonderful for me. I remember how I felt the first class when I walked in. I’d only really interacted with these ideas in books. Coming here has been really, truly life-changing. I just feel really grateful to be a part of this bigger community, and I’m really excited to see what kind of change we can make.”

T. Todd Simon said, “I have gotten so much out of this school, but I think the biggest thing I’ve gotten out of this program is the connections that I’ve made. I’m grateful and honored to be among so many people doing such good work here in South Carolina.”

Stephanie Marrone is a former history and civics teacher who moved to Columbia three years ago. She said, “Since we retired here, this is the my favorite thing that I’ve done, coming to this school. I didn’t think I could learn so much at the age of 62. But I did.”

Irene Rigby said that while her husband, Cecil, was taking the course last year on Zoom, she was watching the food network in the next room. She could hear enough of the lectures, though, to be intrigued. She applied for the spring semester and “got a different kind of meal from this school, something that the food channel couldn’t give to me. I ate this meal every Monday, and got nourished in wisdom and justice and righteousness.”

Nichel Dunlap-Thompson said, “Dr. Greene is amazing. I’ve never heard a lecturer able to keep the audience engaged in the manner he did. As Brett has always told us in every communication, it is about justice — racial justice, economic justice — and it is past time for a radical revolution. I stand in solidarity with you all ready to get back into the fight, regardless of what those consequences may look like. As long as we’re fighting on the side of right. As long as we’re fighting for a democracy that represents all people, as long as we’re fighting for climate justice and economic justice that we know all workers — all people — are entitled to, then we already have the victory.”

Gabbi Zurlo was skeptical, at first. “I showed up on Mondays, vowing after each class that I was too behind these experienced organizers, too anxious, too rural, too uneducated, too alone, too frustrated, that there was no way I can make any difference. As scary as it was to walk into this room every Monday night, Dr. Green’s tutelage reminded me that this history, these stories, are our stories, and that while Modjeska was right, that this is no sitting down time, there’s always time to listen. Oppression will attempt to divide and conquer. Doubts will slow our steps. We will get tired, and at times will seem to be no way. But we will make a way out no way. We are the swerve toward justice, a better South and a better world. We have all we need to look back and push forward, to be the swerve towards a future that will make Ben Tillman roll over in his grave.”

Dr. Greene said, “I look forward to seeing what our graduates do—for each other, for their fellow citizens, and for the state of South Carolina.”

Congratulations to the class of 2024!

• • •

• Watch the graduation HERE.

• Cecil Cahoon’s commencement address is HERE.

• Our photo album is HERE.