Modjeska Simkins School to have Charleston history class

MORNING HEADLINES | The Modjeska Simkins School, a unique series of continuing education classes entering an 11th season of providing in-depth study of South Carolina’s history, is now accepting applications until Feb. 20 for its first in-person master class in Charleston.

Named for civil rights icon Modjeska Monteith Simkins, the school “isn’t just an eye-opening peoples’ history course about cycles of repression and resistance” in the state, said Brett Bursey, executive director of the 30-year-old, nonpartisan S.C. Progressive Network Education Fund, which launched the school in 2015.

“The school’s mission is re-seeding a movement for systemic change with autonomous groups across the state,” he said.

Simkins practiced social activism. She worked with local and national civil rights leaders and NAACP lawyers such as Thurgood Marshall. Simkins’ efforts in the education, public health and human rights arena led her to receive the Order of the Palmetto, the state of South Carolina’s highest honor, before her death in 1992.

In Charleston, classes will be held each Monday, beginning March 2 through June 22. Classes will be held at the office for the Charleston Alliance for Fair Employment, 6296 Rivers Ave., North Charleston. The two-hour sessions will begin at 6:30 p.m. Graduation will be staged June 27.

Students in Charleston will join the live Zoom broadcast from the Grow Cafe in Columbia. Charleston is one of six live simulcast sites around the state.

Last year, the school expanded to Sumter and the Penn Center in Beaufort County. This year, remote classes will also be offered in Orangeburg, Pendleton and the Native American Studies Center in Lancaster.

Since 2019, Claflin University professor Robert Greene II has served as the school’s lead instructor.

“This year’s session … comes at a time of both great peril and great promise for our state and our nation,” said Greene, president of the national African American Intellectual History Society. “Learning the true history of South Carolina’s past can be inspiring and up-lifting.”

“Guided by the example of our own civil rights icon Modjeska Monteith Simkins, the school offers the unvarnished truth about defining events in the people’s history of our state,” said network board member Cecil Cahoon. “You won’t learn as much truth about our past — and how to improve its future — elsewhere.”

This unique and ever-evolving master class is led by guest presenters who are some of the state’s and nation’s leading writers, historians, professors and activists, organizers said.

This course is not for everyone, organizers added. It is intended for history lovers, grassroots activists and people who want to be more effective citizens. The school is a deep dive into difficult topics, and intended for those willing to invest hours of weekly study, organizers said.

Tuition is $500. Payment plans and needs-based scholarship assistance are available. For more information, info@modjeskaschool.com. —Herb Frazier

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