{"id":6,"date":"2020-01-22T19:25:51","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T19:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/diversity-inclusion\/commemorating-desegregation\/?page_id=6"},"modified":"2020-12-16T21:12:29","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T21:12:29","slug":"road-to-desegregation","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/thriving-communities-initiatives\/commemorating-desegregation\/road-to-desegregation\/","title":{"rendered":"Road to Desegregation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty years ago,\u00a0Joseph\u00a0Vaughn walked across Furman University&#8217;s campus to register for classes, ending segregation at the institution. Vaughn&#8217;s\u00a0arrival marked<span class=\"Apple-style-span\">\u00a0the culmination of\u00a0a debate among administrators, faculty and students\u00a0that\u00a0lasted more than a decade.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The debate over desegregation reached Furman&#8217;s student body\u00a0in 1954, after the Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling in <em>Brown v. Board of Education<\/em>. In 1955, two students<span class=\"Apple-style-span\">\u2014Joan Lipscomb and Charles King<\/span><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">\u2014published articles supporting desegregation\u00a0in the student\u00a0literary magazine, <em>The Echo.\u00a0<\/em> Fearing criticism, faculty members and administrators confiscated all 1,500 copies of the magazine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Over the next 10\u00a0years, the university was\u00a0deeply divided over the issue.\u00a0Following a resolution\u00a0from\u00a0faculty calling for the desegregation of Furman, the Board of Trustees voted to open the university to &#8220;all qualified applicants&#8221; in 1963. However, the South Carolina Baptist Convention asked Furman to delay its decision\u00a0by at least one year\u2014a request that was honored by the trustees.<\/p>\n<p>By the time Furman Board of Trustees voted, in December 1964, to admit the school&#8217;s first black student, the fight over segregation in the state and nation had already been decided. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed by Congress in July, forced southern colleges and universities to desegregate or lose funds, thus completing a task that had moved painstakingly through the federal courts since the 1940s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty years ago,\u00a0Joseph\u00a0Vaughn walked across Furman University&#8217;s campus to register for classes, ending segregation at the institution. Vaughn&#8217;s\u00a0arrival marked\u00a0the culmination of\u00a0a debate among administrators, faculty and students\u00a0that\u00a0lasted more than a decade. The debate over desegregation reached Furman&#8217;s student body\u00a0in 1954, after the Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. In 1955, two students\u2014Joan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":128,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/thriving-communities-initiatives\/commemorating-desegregation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/thriving-communities-initiatives\/commemorating-desegregation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/thriving-communities-initiatives\/commemorating-desegregation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/thriving-communities-initiatives\/commemorating-desegregation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/thriving-communities-initiatives\/commemorating-desegregation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/thriving-communities-initiatives\/commemorating-desegregation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/thriving-communities-initiatives\/commemorating-desegregation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/thriving-communities-initiatives\/commemorating-desegregation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}