Black-and-white photograph of Joseph A. DeLaine, Sr., and his wife, Mattie, standing with their children, Joseph Jr., Ophelia, and Brumit, looking at their destroyed home in Summerton, South Carolina. The DeLaine's home and two outbuildings were destroyed by fire after DeLaine arranged for twenty families to file a lawsuit with the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) against segregated education in Clarendon County, South Carolina on November 11, 1949. The case, known as Briggs v. Elliott, became part of the 1954 United States Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. During the course of the trials, federal Judge J. Waites Waring of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a statement declaring that segregation "must go." According to some accounts, before the 1954 Supreme Court decision, the state of South Carolina issued 75 million dollars worth of bonds to provide African Americans school buses and to build new African American schools.

"On the opposite side is Reverend J.A. De Laine and his family viewing the remains of his home and furniture along with two out houses, at the town of Summerton, S.C. In front of the 'Scotts Branch High School' when the Clarendon County School Segregation Case was in the process toward the U.S. Supreme Court. About this time Judge J. Waties Waring issues his Famous Dessenting opinion after the Fourth circuit Court of Appeals of the Federal Court, when he declared that Segregation 'must go!' The Clarendon County Case got the Legal backing of the NAACP when Reverend De Laine got twenty families to Petition the Court on November 11, 1949. Before the conclusion of this case in $ on May 17, 1954 the State of South Carolina floated $75,000,000.00 worth of bonds to give Negroes School Busses and to build new schools. This was the beginning of a real EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION in SOUTH CAROLINA and elsewhere"--verso photograph.

The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.

Legal size - 13439 - (Folder 28), Joseph Armstrong DeLaine papers, ca. 1918-2000, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbus, South Carolina.

Digital image copyright 2008, The University of South Carolina. All rights reserved. For more information contact The South Caroliniana Library, USC, Columbia, SC 29208.

Forms part of online collection: Rev. Joseph A. DeLaine papers, ca. 1918-2000.