Harry Briggs, Sued to End Separate Schools

Harry Briggs, whose original South Carolina lawsuit became part of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that led the U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw “separate but equal schools,” has died. He was 71.

Briggs was pronounced dead at a local hospital last Sunday, family spokesman Sam Washington said.

“He was a silent mover and silent maker of what we now know as public integration because he and his family put themselves on the line for equal access and equal opportunity,” Washington said. He did not volunteer a cause of death.

Briggs was among 20 Clarendon County blacks who filed suit against the local school board in 1949 seeking equal schools and teacher pay.

The Briggs case and others from Virginia and Delaware were consolidated into one case, Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan.

The Supreme Court said in the 1954 ruling that separate schools for blacks and whites were unequal and unlawful.

Briggs, a farmer and service station worker, was fired from his job and fled Summerton as a result of the lawsuit. After 20 years in Florida and New York, he returned to Summerton in 1976.

“We had no dream it would go this far,” Briggs said in an interview before being honored by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in 1979.