The Radical University of South Carolina

U of SC Professor Richard T. Greener
From Wikipedia

The University of South Carolina during the period from 1873 to 1877 is sometimes referred to as the Radical University because the university was reorganized by the Radical Republican state government.

One of the most revolutionary changes the state government implemented was the admission of African American students to the University of South Carolina.  I have seen this change referred to as the integration or desegregation of the university, but those terms do not capture how profound the change was.  During this period, African Americans not only attended the university, but they formed the majority of the student body, roughly half of the Board of Trustees, and included a faculty member.

During my lifetime, I have never seen this level of African American representation at flagship state university.  While every US university I've worked at has had African American students and faculty, the representation of African Americans is roughly at or below their level in broader society.  For example, African Americans make up roughly one-third of the population of South Carolina but only about one-tenth of the U of SC student body. Only 1 person on the 24-body Board of Trustees is African American.

Despite its revolutionary nature, it is hard to figure out what actually happened at the university during Reconstruction.  The admission of African American students is analyzed in many books on reconstruction including Eric Foner's Bancroft prize-winning book Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, but the analyzes are so different its hard to know what to make of them.  Foner, for example, describes the event positively and quotes the following newspaper account given by an African American student:

Right here allow me to say that our standard is high.  In Latin we pass, like other colleges, over the ground which lies between Caesar and Cicero on one side, and Terence and Tacitus on the other.  In Greek we pass from Xenophon and Homer to Sophocles and Plato.  In mathematics we attempt to fight our way from Euclid to analytic geometry.  We spend the usual amount of time in studying physics, chemistry and the modern languages.  In the departments of Bella Lettres, metaphysics, international law, sociology and political economist, we hold sweet communion with several of the grand old masters....

The student then goes on to describe the racial composition of the student body and explains

I am sorry that I have felt called upon to make so many references to races.  I do not like to do it; but I want it distinctly understood that the University of South Carolina is not in possession of any one race or any one condition of men.  Its advantages are being enjoyed by young men who want to make their State better by themselves having lived in it.

The finest argument in factor of "equality before the law" is found here in this peculiar place.  The two races study together, visit each other's rooms, play ball together, walk into the city together, without the the blacks feeling themselves honored or the whites disgraced...

Compare that account to the description given in an early (published in 1905) history of Reconstruction in South Carolina written by South Carolinian John S. Reynolds:

The requirements for admission were so lax – the regulations in this manner were so flagrantly disregarded – that the so-called University soon became little more than a high school, whose chief aim was to inculcate and illustrate the social equality of the black race with the white.  The establishment, taken as a whole, was a fraud upon the taxpayers – a fraud deliberately perpetrated in the name of progress and enlightenment!  In this degraded position the institution continued until it was closed by the white Legislature of 1877.

Earlier he described the Board of Trustees as "adventurers who were unknown or known unfavorably."

Certainly Reynolds and Foner have diametrically opposed political beliefs that are reflected in the differences in their descriptions, but a close inspection of accounts shows disagreement over basic facts.  For example, how many African Americans were enrolled?  The student indicates says that "a pretty large proportion of these [students] are of the Caucasian rate", while Reynolds says that African Americans made up "more than nine-tenths" of the student population.

Similarly, who were the African American students?  The image formed by reading Reynold's account is that they were probably fieldhands who had left plantations, but South Carolina was also home to a small (about 2% of the African American population) but significant population of African Americans who had been free before the Civil War, some of whom had achieved significant economic and political security.

What did the students do after the university was closed?  Was the education wasted on them (Reynolds certainly seems to think so) or were they able to complete their education and have successful careers?

The best description of the African American students is given in a May 8, 1911 Letter to the Editor of The State newspaper written by an alumnus, Cornelius Chapman Scott.  Scott describes the (impressive) accomplishments of some of the alumni, but there is no reasonably comprehensive overview of the students.  On this blog, I will try to flesh things out by writing short biographies of as many students as I can.  Roughly 100 students attended the university during this time, so compiling short biographies of everyone is a reasonable task.

University of South Carolina campus
Form the University of South Carolina