COLUMBIA, S.C. — Two rare documents from a fleeting time after the Civil War when the University of South Carolina first admitted African-American students and faculty went on exhibition Tuesday, recalling early steps toward racial equality that succumbed to the long era of segregation.
A law school diploma from the university and a South Carolina law license granted in 1876 to Richard Theodore Greener, the first African-American faculty member of the university, were scheduled for a ceremonial presentation at noon Tuesday at the South Caroliniana Library on the school’s Columbia campus.
Both documents survived after being plucked from a Chicago home in 2009 that was about to be demolished.
Greener, the first African-American graduate of Harvard and a promising intellectual who fought for equality, was invited to join the faculty of the South Carolina university in 1873, where he later became the first black head of its library. At the time, the prominent Southern university was briefly integrated in the post-war Reconstruction era.
“It was a fascinating time in our history, a time of so much hope. Reconstruction was an era when those who had been so oppressed believed they might achieve equality,” said the university’s archivist, Elizabeth Cassidy West.
Greener taught philosophy, Latin and Greek, and also studied law. He graduated from the university’s law school and was licensed to practice law in 1876.
Greener’s diploma and law license were going on display Tuesday as part of an exhibit detailing contributions blacks have played in the university’s history. The exhibition coincides with the university’s yearlong remembrance of events that led up to 1963, when the school once again admitted Black students amid the struggle for Civil Rights.
