Jonathan Jasper Wright and equal access to education in the 1868 South Carolina constitution
We’ve touched on Justice Wright’s education experiences as central to his growth as an adult and a leader. Education was a thread that wove throughout his life. And one significant milestone in this area was his participation in the convention that redrew the South Carolina state constitution in 1868. The 1868 constitution reflected the newfound power of the Black citizenry during Reconstruction, and intended to revise the laws of the state after the 1865 constitution, which attempted to cement white authority and restrict Black civil liberties after the dissolution of slavery. [Starting in 1865, laws known as the Black Codes were adopted and enforced. An example Code was a law to require Black adults to provide proof of employment on demand, leading many to sign exploitive contracts with employers yearly. Those who lacked such contracts ran the risk of arrest and imprisonment for “vagrancy.”]
There were several crucial topics of the 1868 meetings, including voting rights and homestead regulations - issues not exclusively in the interest of the Black populace - and universal public education.
The last issue was fundamentally important to the new Black leadership - among them Jonathan Jasper Wright, who was an elected delegate to the constitutional convention from Beaufort County.
Wright’s goal of equality of the races depended on a well-educated populace, able not only to participate fully in the democratic process, but to lead - not in place of, but alongside their fellow white citizens.
Central to that goal was Section 10 [the image seen at the top of this note] and its specification that public education be open to all, “without regard to race or color.”
During the constitutional convention, a liberal white delegate, B. Odell Duncan of Newberry County, argued that the passage would be interpreted as mandating mixing of the races in schools, and thereby provoke intense opposition from the white populace.
In his rebuttal, delegate Wright revealed some of his personal philosophy, which could be termed conservative - and which invited criticism from some of his Black contemporaries and at least one current legal scholar. Said Wright, in part:
The provision leaves it so that white and colored children can attend school together, if they desire to do so; but I do not believe the colored children will want to go to the white schools, or vice versa. I think there will be separate schools established, and there is no clause in our Constitution that prevents it; therefore, I hope this clause will be adopted exactly as it is. One thing I would have understood, the colored people do not want to force what is called social equality; that is a matter which will regulate itself….
All you have to do is stand up, face the music for a while, and I tell you that every man, white and black, in South Carolina will come to time. This prejudice will be broken down…. Time will prove our work. [Proceedings of the 1868 SC Constitutional Convention, p 894]
In the end, the article was adopted as written.
[Source note: some of this material is drawn from James Lowell Underwood’s essay “The South Carolina Constitution of 1868” published in At Freedom’s Door: African American Founding Fathers and Lawyers in Reconstruction South Carolina, edited b0y Underwood and W. Lewis Burke. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000]