Johnson, Isaac Samuel Leevy

As a strong proponent of minority education in a state that underfunded segregated black schools, Leevy pushed for the creation of Waverly Elementary School, Leevy Graded School (now Carver Elementary), and Booker T. Washington High School in Columbia.

The University of South Carolina dominated legal education in the state. In 1886 its graduates were granted admission to the bar without taking an examination, a practice known as the “diploma privilege.”

The school began with a class of ten men, one building (a dilapidated former slave master’s house), and one teacher, the Reverend Timothy L. Dodge. By the end of the twentieth century, Benedict College saw its enrollment grow to nearly three thousand students, making it, in terms of enrollment, one of the largest historically black colleges in the Carolinas and one of the largest private colleges in South Carolina.

The NAACP State Conference won a series of important legal victories that struck blows against Jim Crow and charted a path toward the democratization of the state’s political system.