I. DeQuincey Newman | |
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Member of the South Carolina Senate from the 19th district | |
In office 1983–1985 | |
Preceded by | Alex Sanders |
Succeeded by | Kay Patterson |
State Field Director,South Carolina NAACP | |
In office 1960–1969 | |
Preceded by | Hudson D. Anderson |
Succeeded by | Isaac W. Williams |
Personal details | |
Born | Isaiah DeQuincey Newman April 17,1911 Darlington County,South Carolina |
Died | July 31,1985 74) Columbia,South Carolina | (aged
Resting place | Greenlawn Memorial Park,Columbia |
Political party | Democratic (1958–1985) |
Other political affiliations | Republican (until 1958) |
Spouse | Anne Pauline Hinton (m. 1937) |
Relations | Clifton Newman,nephew |
Children | Emily Morris DeQuincey |
Alma mater | Clark College Gammon Theological Seminary |
Isaiah DeQuincey Newman (April 17,1911 - July 31,1985) was an American civil rights activist,Methodist pastor,and state senator from the US state of South Carolina. He is credited with assisting in the foundation of the Democratic Progressive Party,and serving as the state field director for the South Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1960 to 1969.
Newman was born in Darlington County,South Carolina,to Reverend Melton C. Newman and Charlotte Elizabeth Morris. As an 8-year-old,Newman witnessed the Ku Klux Klan set fire to a caboose holding an arrested African American man. Hearing his screams,Newman begged his father to help the man. His father didn't. Newman later said that incident spurred his pursuit for a just society.
"I tell you I put that in my memory bank. I kept that in my heart for a long time and I held it against my father. There was a man being burned alive,and my father wouldn't turn a hand to help him. Of course,I learned since then had he gone to give help,he would have been shot down,just killed." [1]
He graduated from high school at Claflin College. He was ordained in the United Methodist Church in 1931. He later received a bachelor of arts degree from Clark College and a divinity degree from Gammon Theological Seminar,both in Atlanta,Georgia. [2] He would serve in United Methodist Churches in Georgia and South Carolina for the next forty years.
In 1943,Newman helped organize a branch of the NAACP in Orangeburg,South Carolina. He would serve in various roles within the South Carolina NAACP before becoming state field director in 1960 - a position he would serve in until 1969. His tenure saw a changing South Carolina that included such events as the Orangeburg Massacre,where the South Carolina National Guard shot and killed three South Carolina State College (now University) students.
Newman was originally a member of the Republican Party,but he found himself increasingly dissatisfied with its position on segregation. Newman would be present at the first organizing convention of the Progressive Democratic Party,a black-led party with focuses on equality and desegregation. [3] By 1958,he had switched his membership to the Democratic Party,where he served as a delegate to the 1968,1972,and 1980 Democratic National Conventions. [4]
After his tenure with the NAACP,Newman served as the director of the Governor's Office of Rural Development (also referred to as the Governor's Rural Regional Coordination Demonstration Project) from 1975 to 1981;this was a position that focused on combating poverty and hunger in South Carolina's rural areas.
In 1983,Newman was the first African American elected to the South Carolina State Senate since Reconstruction in 1887. [4]
In 1985,Newman resigned from the South Carolina Senate as he struggled with lung cancer and emphysema. He died in Columbia on October 21,1985. [4]
In 1986,the Richland County Legislative Delegation and the Highway Commission dedicated South Carolina Highway 277 as the "I. DeQuincey Newman Freeway." [5]
In 2001,the University of South Carolina created the I. DeQuincey Newman Institute for Peace and Social Justice and an endowed chair position of the same name,held in the College of Social Work. [6]
In 2012,a historical marker was erected near the site of his home. [7]
Orangeburg,also known as The Garden City,is the principal city in and the county seat of Orangeburg County,South Carolina,United States. The population of the city was 13,964 according to the 2020 census. The city is located 37 miles southeast of Columbia,on the north fork of the Edisto River.
James Enos Clyburn is an American politician and retired educator serving as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina. He has also served as House assistant Democratic leader since 2023,having previously held the position from 2011 to 2019. Clyburn additionally served as House Majority Whip between 2007 and 2011 and between 2019 and 2023.
Modjeska Monteith Simkins was an important leader of African-American public health reform,social reform and the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina.
The Orangeburg Massacre was a shooting of student protesters that took place on February 8,1968,on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg,South Carolina,United States. Nine Highway Patrolmen and one city police officer opened fire on a crowd of African American students,killing three and injuring twenty-eight. The shootings were the culmination of a series of protests against racial segregation at a local bowling alley,marking the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American university.
South Carolina's 2nd congressional district is in central and southwestern South Carolina. The district spans from Columbia to the South Carolina side of the Augusta,Georgia metropolitan area.
Robert Evander McNair Sr. was the 108th governor of South Carolina,a Democrat,who served from 1965 to 1971.
William Jennings Bryan Dorn was a United States politician from South Carolina who represented the western part of the state in the United States House of Representatives from 1947 to 1949 and from 1951 to 1975 as a Democrat.
The South Carolina Conference is an annual conference of the United Methodist Church. This conference serves the state of South Carolina with its administrative offices and the office of the bishop being in Columbia,South Carolina. It is part of the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference.
WLXC is an urban adult contemporary radio station licensed to Columbia,South Carolina that serves the Columbia,South Carolina market. The Cumulus Media outlet is licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to broadcast with an ERP of 6 kW. The station goes by the name Kiss 103.1 and its current slogan is "Columbia’s Best Variety of R&B."Its studios are located at the Tower building in Downtown Columbia,South Carolina and the transmitter is in Columbia northeast of downtown.
Kay Patterson is an American politician who was a Democratic member of the South Carolina Senate,representing the 19th District from 1985 to his retirement in 2008. He was previously a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1975 through 1985.
Gloria Blackwell, also known as Gloria Rackley,was an African-American civil rights activist and educator. She was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in Orangeburg,South Carolina during the 1960s,attracting some national attention and a visit by Dr. Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her activities were widely covered by the local press.
Gilda Cobb-Hunter is a Democratic member of the South Carolina House of Representatives. She is the first African American woman elected to the State House from Orangeburg County. Cobb-Hunter is the former representative for South Carolina's 66th district. Following redistricting and the 2022 general election,Cobb-Hunter now represents South Carolina House District 95 and David L. O'Neal represents South Carolina's 66th district.
Jacob Moorer was a South Carolina lawyer and civil rights activist. He frequently fought cases in opposition to the elector provisions of the 1895 South Carolina Constitution,which he viewed as disenfranchising blacks. His most famous case was Franklin v. South Carolina,a murder case involving black sharecropper Pink Franklin which he and John Adams,Sr. appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
Franklin v. South Carolina,218 U.S. 161 (1910),was the trial of Pink Franklin for the murder of South Carolina Constable Henry H. Valentine in 1907. Franklin was a sharecropper who wished to leave his employer although his employer had advanced Franklin wages under a contract based on the so-called "peonage laws". A warrant was obtained and when Valentine came to the house,a shootout occurred,killing Valentine and injuring Franklin,his wife Patsy,and another constable who was there. The defense included claims that Franklin acted in self-defense and that the peonage laws were unjust. In appeal,the defense claimed that the make-up of the jury,all white based on the requirement that the jury be based on those who were eligible to vote,was based on unconstitutional racism in election laws stemming from the 1895 South Carolina constitution. Franklin's conviction was upheld in all appeals,including the appeal before the United States Supreme Court heard in April 1910.
Cecil J. Williams is an American photographer,publisher,author and inventor whose photographs document the civil rights movement in South Carolina beginning in the 1950s.
Prior to the civil rights movement in South Carolina,African Americans in the state had very few political rights. South Carolina briefly had a majority-black government during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War,but with the 1876 inauguration of Governor Wade Hampton III,a Democrat who supported the disenfranchisement of blacks,African Americans in South Carolina struggled to exercise their rights. Poll taxes,literacy tests,and intimidation kept African Americans from voting,and it was virtually impossible for someone to challenge the Democratic Party,which ran unopposed in most state elections for decades. By 1940,the voter registration provisions written into the 1895 constitution effectively limited African-American voters to 3,000—only 0.8 percent of those of voting age in the state.
The Dr. Cyril O. Spann Medical Office,located in Columbia,South Carolina,served African-American patients during de jure and de facto racial segregation in the United States. Built in 1963,it was added to United States National Register of Historic Places on May 20,2019.
Sadye L. Logan is a social work academic who is the I. DeQuincey Newman Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Social Work at the University of South Carolina.
Clifton B. Newman is an American attorney and at-large judge of the South Carolina Circuit Court. He has served as a judge since his election by the state's general assembly in 2000. In 2021,he was reelected to a final fourth term. In his role as a circuit court judge he has presided over several high profile trials,including the trials of Michael Slager,Nathaniel Rowland,and Alex Murdaugh.