Isaiah DeQuincey Newman | |
---|---|
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 Williams |
Personal details | |
Born | Darlington County,South Carolina | April 17,1911
Died | July 31,1985 74) Columbia,South Carolina | (aged
Resting place | Greenlawn Memorial Park,Columbia |
Political party | Republican (until 1958),then Democratic |
Spouse(s) | Anne Pauline Hinton (m. 1937) |
Children | Emily Morris DeQuincey |
Alma mater | Clark College Gammon Theological Seminary |
Isaiah DeQuincey Newman (April 17,1911 - July 31,1985) was a 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]
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 2010 United States Census. The city is located 37 miles southeast of Columbia,on the north fork of the Edisto River.
James Shaver Woodsworth was a pre–First World War pioneer of the Canadian Social Gospel,a Christian religious movement with social democratic values and links to organized labour. He was a long-time leader and publicist in the movement and was an elected politician under the label,serving as MP from 1921 to his death in 1942. He helped found the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF),a forerunner of today's New Democratic Party (NDP),in 1932.
Modjeska Monteith Simkins was an important leader of African-American public health reform,social reform and the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina.
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.
Septima Poinsette Clark was an African American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Septima Clark's work was commonly under-appreciated by Southern male activists. She became known as the "Queen mother" or "Grandmother" of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. commonly referred to Clark as "The Mother of the Movement". Clark's argument for her position in the Civil Rights Movement was one that claimed "knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn't."
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.
Cleveland “Cleve”Sellers Jr. is an American educator and civil rights activist.
Samuel Dibble was a lawyer,educator and U.S. Representative from South Carolina.
C. Bradley Hutto is a Democratic member of the South Carolina Senate,representing the Senate District 40 since 1996. Senate District 40 encompasses all or portions of the counties of Allendale,Bamberg,Barnwell,Colleton,Hampton,and Orangeburg. It is the only Senate District that includes six county seats.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States,formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois,Mary White Ovington,Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells.
Stephen Keith Benjamin is an American politician and businessman serving as the 44th mayor of Columbia,South Carolina since July 2010. He is the first African American mayor in the city's history. Before serving as mayor,he worked in the Columbia metropolitan area as an attorney and served on various charitable organizations. On November 8,2017,Benjamin won re-election for a third term as mayor with no votes because no other candidate filed. Benjamin was declared re-elected. Mayor Benjamin previously served as the 76th President of the United States Conference of Mayors.
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,representing District 66 in Orangeburg County and living in Orangeburg. She is the first African American woman elected to the State House from Orangeburg County.
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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 best known for his photography documenting the civil rights movement in South Carolina beginning in the 1950s.
Jaime R. Harrison is an American politician,who is the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee,after previously serving as the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party from 2013 to 2017. Harrison unsuccessfully ran against incumbent senator Lindsey Graham for the South Carolina U.S. Senate seat in the 2020 election.
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.