John Roy Harper II | |
---|---|
Chair of the United Citizens Party | |
Personal details | |
Born | September 2, 1939 Greenwood |
Died | July 27, 2003 63) Columbia, SC | (aged
Spouse | Denise Jefferson 1944-2010 |
Children | 1 |
Education | Fisk University (BA) University of South Carolina (JD) |
John Roy Harper II (September 2, 1939 - July 7, 2003) was an American attorney and founder of the United Citizens Party.
John Roy Harper II was born in 1939 to Mary Frances (née Smith) and John Roy Harper, both of whom were longtime teachers at Boylan-Haven-Mather Academy, [1] known as Mather Academy. Harper attended Mather Academy, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Fisk University and a Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law.
Harper was a plaintiff in several Voting Rights Act cases regarding redistricting plans, including Harper v. Kleindeinst, McCollum v. West. [2] His cases reached the US District Court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. [3]
In 1988, Harper along with NAACP attorney Willie Abrams sued Richland County, resulting in 11 voting districts and the election of four Black members of County Council. [4]
Harper worked with state lead Kevin Alexander Gray on Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign. [5]
Harper was one of five men running to be the first Black person elected to Congress from South Carolina since George W. Murray during Reconstruction. In the 1992 Democratic Primary for the 6th Congressional district were Harper, Jim Clyburn, State Senator Herbert Fielding, State Senator Frank Gilbert, and Dr. Kenneth Mosely, an educator. [6]
His former wife, Denise Jefferson, was director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater until her death. [7] He was the father of singer, dancer, and choreographer, Francesca Harper.
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest-ranking judicial body in the United States. Established by Article III of the Constitution, the detailed structure of the court was laid down by the 1st United States Congress in 1789. Congress specified the Court's original and appellate jurisdiction, created 13 judicial districts, and fixed the initial size of the Supreme Court. The number of justices on the Supreme Court changed six times before settling at the present total of nine in 1869. As of June 2022, a total of 116 justices have served on the Supreme Court since 1789. Justices have life tenure, and so they serve until they die in office, resign or retire, or are impeached and removed from office.
Briggs v. Elliott, 342 U.S. 350 (1952), on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, challenged school segregation in Summerton, South Carolina. It was the first of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional by violating the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Following the Brown decision, the district court issued a decree that struck down the school segregation law in South Carolina as unconstitutional and required the state's schools to integrate. Harry and Eliza Briggs, Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine, and Levi Pearson were awarded Congressional Gold Medals posthumously in 2003.
James Enos Clyburn is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for South Carolina's 6th congressional district. First elected in 1992, Clyburn represents a congressional district that includes most of the majority-black precincts in and around Columbia and Charleston, as well as most of the majority-black areas outside Beaufort and nearly all of South Carolina's share of the Black Belt. Since Joe Cunningham's departure in 2021, Clyburn has been the only Democrat in South Carolina's congressional delegation and as well as the dean of this delegation since 2011 after fellow Democrat John Spratt lost re-election.
The United Citizens Party (UCP) is an American political party first organized in 1969 in the U.S. state of South Carolina by John Roy Harper II and others, in response to the state Democratic Party's opposition to nominating black candidates. The party's objective was to elect blacks to the legislature and local offices in counties with black majority populations. The party ran candidates in 1970 and 1972; as a result in 1970 the first three black candidates were elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives since Reconstruction.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is an American civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.
This is a timeline of African-American history, the part of history that deals with African Americans.
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Kay Patterson was 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.
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization 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, Ida B. Wells, Lillian Wald, and Henry Moskowitz. Over the years, leaders of the organization have included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins.
Denise Adele Jefferson was an American dance educator who served as the director of the Ailey School of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1984 until her death.
Boylan-Haven-Mather Academy, more familiarly known as “Mather Academy,” was a private African American boarding school in Camden, South Carolina. Its name reflects four schools founded and merged in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida by the Women's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to educate former slaves and their descendants. Boylan-Haven-Mather Academy closed in 1983. Among its graduates/students were U.S. Congressman James E. Clyburn (D-SC), major league baseball pioneer Larry Doby, businessman E. Perry Palmer, childcare advocate Frieda Mitchell, "Dean of the CIAA" coach Eddie C. McGirt, and civil rights attorney John Roy Harper II.
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Franklin v. South Carolina, 218 U.S. 161 (1910) appealed the conviction 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.
Francesca Harper is an American dancer and choreographer.
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Three justices of the seven-member North Carolina Supreme Court and five judges of the 15-member North Carolina Court of Appeals were elected by North Carolina voters on November 3, 2020, concurrently with other state elections. Terms for seats on each court are eight years. These elections were conducted on a partisan basis.