Benedict College Students In The Civil Rights Move

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In this paper I will discuss Benedict College’s students’ participation in the civil rights movement through 1955 to the late 1960s. These students involvement in this movement was vital to the advancement of African Americans in South Carolina without the establishment of HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in the South, the movement might have never been as instrumental, or as powerful as it was. According to Clayborne Carson’s book In Struggle Historically Black Colleges and University’s provided the meeting ground for students to come together to express their grievances towards their social constraints, and in doing so, realize that what affected one, affected them all. In Carson’s book, he talks about the establishment of one of the most influential civil rights organization SNCC. He states that “SNCC’s founding was an important step in the transformation of a limited student movement.” In 1870 Benedict College was founded in Columbia South Carolina, being only one out of two Historically Black Colleges or Universities in Columbia, it made a name for itself as being founded on the belief that education should be used to benefit all people. Student activism at Benedict College was present as well as others throughout the Carolinas and its surrounding states. The sources used in my paper will be Clayborne Carson’s In Struggle SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, V.P. Franklin’s Patterns of Student Activism at Historically Black Universities in the United States and South Africa, Fredrick Richardson’s, A Power for Good in Society. These books and scholarly journal article help establish the background of the civil rights movement and help tell who participated in this movement. In Clayborne Carson book “In Struggle” he explains the significance of college students within the civil rights movement.. Carson goes in detail about the first
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