County receives grant funding for oral history project

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The Charleston County Zoning and Planning Department was awarded a $50,000 African American Civil Rights Grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Park Service to fund an oral history project.

The project, called A Journey to Equal Education: Stories from Historic African-American Communities, will focus on the experiences of students during the desegregation of public schools in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Zoning and Planning Department plans to hire a cultural resources consultant to carry out the project’s work, including interviews with alumni from S.C. Equalization Schools, which were elementary and high schools constructed for African-American students in the state in the 1950s. The intent, according to a news release from the county, was to improve schools and demonstrate that all students were receiving a “separate but equal” education.

The grant project will focus on conversations with alumni from W. Gresham Meggett School on James Island, an equalization school that was recently nominated (.pdf) for the National Register of Historic Places.

After the consultant is hired, Charleston County will hold a community meeting to share more details about the project.

The county also plans to partner with the Heritage Community Development Corp. to assist with outreach. Grant funding concludes in April 2020.