Growing Up Black in Conservative South Carolina

Charles Hamilton Houston once said “A lawyer’s either a social engineer or…a parasite on society … A social engineer [is] a highly skilled, perceptive, sensitive lawyer who [understands] the Constitution of the United States and [knows] how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of local communities and in bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens.” This personal statement will explain why I want to become an attorney and how my experiences as an African-American man from the Deep South have equipped me with the experiences needed to become an attorney.

Growing up as an African-American man in South Carolina has forced me, at numerous times, to possess a high-level of duality that allows me to love and embrace my home while dealing with the racist hate-filled past (and present) of the Deep South. It has forced me to come to grips with the fact that the state that I have grown up in all of my life has built its history around the racial oppression, discrimination, and hatred of African-American men and women like me. I have had to witness the harsh treatment that we as African-Americans in throughout South Carolina have been forced to submit to at the hands of law enforcement officers like former Richland County police office Ben Fields, who was fired from his position in October 2015 after he assaulted and flipped a 16-year old black female student in her desk at Spring Valley High School and dragged her across the room. Or the civil rights violations of Niya Kenny, an 18-year old former student at Spring Valley High School who recorded the entire incident. Kenny, who felt uncomfortable returning back to school, spoke up against officer Fields’ actions, and as a result, she was arrested and hauled off to a detention center. I am also reminded of Taurean Nesmith, a 21-year old African-American student at Benedict College who was arrested because he criticized a police officer during the stop of a fellow student.

This racism also exposes itself, both within, outside, and through religious institutions as well. In 2015, During a prayer service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roof killed nine people, all African Americans, including senior pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney, and injured one other person. After several people identified Roof as the main suspect, he became the center of a manhunt that ended the morning after the shooting with his arrest in Shelby, North Carolina. He later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war. White supremacists, such as Earl Holt of the Council of Conservative Citizens and Harold Covington of the Northwest Front, defended the actions of Dylan Roof by claiming that Roof had “some "legitimate grievances" against black people and that the group's website "accurately and honestly report[s] black-on-white violent crime". But we can’t forget the racial discriminatory actions of South Carolina’s own Bob Jones University in Greenville, in which the university did not enroll nor accept African-Americans students until 1971 and from 1971 to 1975, Bob Jones University admitted only married African-American students. This resulted in the rescinding of the university’s tax-exempt status, which led to the 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bob Jones University vs. U.S.A.

Witnessing these incidents has empowered me to become an attorney and a “social engineer” who will use the Constitution to solve the pressing issues that disproportionately impact the African-American community. Coupling these experiences with my political science training at historically-black Benedict College and predominately-black Woodland High School has shown me the importance of having more African-American attorneys to fight for the civil and constitutional rights of African-Americans and communities of color while also using the Constitution of the United States and [knows] how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of local communities and in bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens. At Benedict College, many of my classmates were the first members of our families to attend (and now graduate) from college. Many of us who grew up in South Carolina have often shared stories about people who doubted our capacities and embraced conservative, restrictive policies such as the “school-to-prison pipeline” that undermined our chances in life of being successful, educated African-American men and women.

My educational background at predominately black Woodland High School, and historically-black Voorhees College and Benedict College has reinforced to me the treatment and perception that my home state of South Carolina has towards African-American men and women like me. At Benedict College, I gained empowerment and leadership experience through activities such as serving as president of Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society, as vice-president and secretary of the Pre-Law Society, and as the first Course Power Ambassador for Benedict College through IT-ology. I conveyed civic responsibility through service-learning projects with agencies and organizations such as the South Carolina Democratic Party (which has advocated for the issues that African-Americans have), the office of the Mayor of the City of Columbia (which allowed me to gain hands-on experience about the inner workings of local government through working for the first African-American mayor of Columbia), and the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (which has worked with the African-American community to help them with the process of purchasing their own home). Through these experiences, I have gained an understanding of how the legal system and the law can be used to help solve the issues that African-Americans face on a daily basis.

Growing up black in South Carolina, I have been told that I would never graduate from high school let alone go to college. I was told that I would live on government assistance for the rest of my life and that I would never achieve the American dream of homeownership and economic prosperity. I have been told that I would have multiple children by multiple women, and that I would have a criminal record longer than the book “Fifty Shades of Gray”. Yet through all of the stereotypes, here I am: An educated black man armed with a degree in political science and work experience equivalent to that of a southern, conservative white man in America.