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| Affiliation | Nonpartisan |
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| Name | Levi Pearson |
| Address |
, South Carolina , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
00, 1892
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| Died | 00, 1970
(78 years)
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| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Last Modifed | Juan Croniqueur
Oct 07, 2022 01:51am |
| Tags |
Black -
|
| Info | Brothers Levi and Hammitt Pearson couldn't read well but wanted to know about the world. So Levi's oldest son Willie would read the newspaper to them. It was a family ritual.
They would read at noon - with Willie or sometimes the younger Ferdinand scouring the news, Levi and Hammitt listening.
"They would be called to dinner and say, 'Be there in a minute,'" says Ferdinand Pearson, now 79 and retired from farming and civil service.
All those stories of a larger world, a world more benevolent in some ways than home, were key to Levi and Hammitt Pearson's quest, a small quest that led to big changes: They wanted black children to ride to school.
What resulted was much more: Brown v. the Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled segregation of public schools unconstitutional. This week, members of the national commission planning 50th anniversary celebrations of that ruling are visiting South Carolina. And two Clarendon County brothers are part of the reason why.
In the 1930s and 1940s, two- and three-teacher schools, often bare-to-the-bones wooden buildings provided by churches, were scattered about the countryside for black children. The walks to them were long. The 12 children of Levi Pearson, the eight children of Hammitt Pearson walked. Some walked seven miles to Mt. Zion, nine miles to Summerton - one way.
In the 1930s and 1940s in South Carolina, most rural folk didn't have telephones or cars. So children couldn't call parents for a ride if the weather turned bad. Black children couldn't get a ride at all, because the state of South Carolina provided bus transportation only to white children.
"It was terrible to have it too cold to work in the field and put a kid out to walk five to six miles to school," says Ferdinand Pearson.
He walked to Mt. Zion. "We usually gave ourselves two hours to make it. Sometimes, we'd be late, depending on the weather."
Cousin Jesse Pearson, Hammitt's second-oldest son, walked all the way to Summerton. "I'd leave home at dawn of day, and I'd be at school on time," he says.
'MY FATHER ... STOOD UP TO THE TASK'
In 1946, Levi and Hammitt Pearson and more than a dozen other families chipped in to buy an old bus for Davis Station children. Another group of families around Jordan did the same. Jordan and Davis Station are Clarendon County communities, near Summerton.
"They'd have a meeting at least once a week to collect funds to keep the bus running," says Ferdinand Pearson. "That old bus was pretty well all worn out. It periodically broke down to and from school, and they had to pay the driver, and money was hard to come by."
Appeals, before and after the purchase, to white school trustees didn't result in help. Appeals to the Rev. Joseph A. DeLaine, Jesse and Ferdinand's schoolteacher, did.
DeLaine, who founded the Clarendon County NAACP, was in contact with James Hinton, president of the state NAACP. Hinton told DeLaine, "Get somebody with the nerve to protest the system, and they would try something legally," says Ferdinand Pearson.
"My father, being a person who would sacrifice to help not only his family but people in general, he stood up to the task, him and his brother," he says.
Life wasn't an easy time for either man.
Their wives had died two weeks apart around 1930. At the time, Levi Pearson had six children; Hammitt had three. Levi took all the children, and Hammitt set off for Philadelphia to work and send money home.
The brothers were landowners but poor.
"He struggled," says Ferdinand Pearson of his father. "But he was a man of great determination. He felt like 'I can do it in spite of,' and he had the support of Hammitt, who helped financially."
Life wasn't easy for their sons, either.
Jesse and Ferdinand Pearson quit school in their early teens; they worked in Baltimore and sent money home. When the two were drafted, they kept sendingmoney home, $37 of each $50-a-month paycheck.
During World War II, Ferdinand Pearson fought with an engineering battalion of the 5th Army in France, Belgium and Germany, then was shipped to Okinawa for a planned invasion of Japan that became an occupation. Jesse Pearson served in an advance unit with the 5th Army in Italy, fighting his way across the Arno River, through the Appenine Mountains and into the Po River Valley.
'A NEED TO MAKE THINGS BETTER'
The memories of the South at that time have a bitter and amazing taste for Ferdinand and Jesse Pearson. In 1946, both were back from World War II, and neither could believe they had risked their lives for such treatment at home.
When Jesse Pearson was discharged at Fort Bragg, he rode a bus home - sitting in the back. Says Ferdinand Pearson, "All the places I'd been, the sacrifices I'd made for my country, and I found myself back in a place with 'white only' water fountains."
In July 1946, the two had to petition to receive agricultural training through the GI Bill. In Clarendon County, only whites were offered the benefits.
Next, they backed up their fathers' bus quest, even meeting with lawyers. Says Jesse Pearson, "I was still upset as a vet." One week, he served as substitute driver on the old yellow bus.
Says Ferdinand Pearson, "My Dad believed in right. He believed in progress. He believed in standing up for what he thought was right. That rubbed off on me.
"I thought it could be better, and there was a need to make things better, not only for our family but for all people - and to do it the legal way."
Some people were horrified or terrified that the Pearsons dared to challenge white leaders. Some were afraid to talk to the Pearsons in public. "So many in the black community didn't feel it was anything but raising confusion, making things worse," says Ferdinand Pearson.
The cousins had bought adjacent tracts near their fathers. When credit was refused, when machinery wasn't available for harvest, when no one would purchase cut timber in punishment for their boldness, all the Pearsons stuck it out. When at night, cars would zoom down their country roads, the people inside shooting, Levi and Hammitt Pearson would go outside and shoot in the air, "just to let people know they were on alert," says Ferdinand Pearson.
Some help was offered: The AFL-CIO collected money; the black-owned Victory Bank in Columbia offered loans; Billie Fleming with the local NAACP located farm equipment.
In 1947, Levi Pearson gave up on requests for gas, or money to pay a driver, or another bus and sued for school-bus transportation in the name of James Pearson, a son from his second marriage. In July 1947, Columbia attorney Harold Boulware mailed the suit to school trustees. When there was no response by October, Levi Pearson wrote them. A month later, Boulware wrote the trustees and county superintendent.
In between, a trustee wrote Boulware to claim Levi Pearson had changed his mind. Levi Pearson responded they "assume too much when they assume that I am not interested in the bus transportation suit. ... Go ahead with the case."
In March 1948, Levi Pearson's lawsuit was filed in federal court. In April, school officials paid a visit to say his taxes were not paid in District 26, the Summerton district his children attended, and thus he had no right to sue it.
Says Ferdinand Pearson, "A road ran through his property. They said he sued in one district and lived in another; that was true. But he did have property in the district he sued in. I know the line that divided his property, and he had 25 acres in one district, 170 acres in the other."
The lawsuit was dismissed in June.
"The thing that stopped the case, I guess it was meant to be," says Ferdinand Pearson. "It didn't actually kill the suit; it made it better."
'WE'LL BE PREPARED TO WIN'
In March 1949, Jesse Pearson joined the elder Pearsons in Columbia, intent on persuading NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall to keep pushing the Clarendon County lawsuit.
"He said he needed 20 plaintiffs or more, or he would move to another county," says Jesse Pearson. "We met with attorney Marshall to plead for one more chance to get plaintiffs. Rev. DeLaine said, 'We can get 100 if you need.'
"Attorney Marshall said he had another place to go, another place he could take a case. Rev. DeLaine and the rest of us fully endorsed keeping it in Clarendon County."
Ferdinand Pearson says his father and uncle believed segregation, and its many ramifications, "wasn't in the Constitution, but just a way to do things. They felt there was a chance to get their case heard by the right people and make things better."
And they were correct. With Marshall navigating the legal intricacies, the Pearsons' first step - their small request for a bus - was transformed into a larger petition for equal buildings, books, teachers' pay, the whole nine yards, supported by 107 parents and children. And that lawsuit, Briggs v. Elliott, became a desegregation suit; it combined with four others to become Brown v. the Board of Education, the 1954 decision ending segregation in public schools.
At one point, Marshall, later a U.S. Supreme Court justice, spent a day at Levi Pearson's farm, plotting strategy at a table under a big oak.
"They worked all day under that tree," says Jesse Pearson. "He said, 'I'll be prepared to ask 1,000 questions; we'll work late hours at night; we'll drink gallons of coffee. We'll be prepared to win when we get to the Supreme Court.'"
'THE RESULT OF WHAT OUR PARENTS DID'
Winning didn't end the Pearsons' commitment to civil rights.
Jesse Pearson, now 81 and retired to Blythewood, left South Carolina in 1956. He moved to Connecticut, where he worked in Pratt & Whitney's aircraft engine factory. He stayed in contact with the Rev. DeLaine, acting as a conduit for aid to petitioners.
Ferdinand Pearson, who continued to farm, helped integrate Manning's only theater in 1965. In 1966, daughter Alfreda and son Jerome integrated Manning High School with four other students.
"Our parents believed in it and taught it, and we had to demonstrate it, do it," says Alfreda Pearson, who owns a Columbia interior decorating business, Le' Als Creations.
She remembers being scared. "My father didn't make us do it; he let us make up our minds." But he pointed out, "If we don't do something, it won't get better."
Alfreda Pearson was sure of four things: She would be lonely. The academic work would be hard. She didn't want to "look dumb." And, "We were the result of what our parents did; we had to do our job."
So she did.
Looking back, Alfreda Pearson prefers to speak in metaphor, rather than detail the difficulties. She says, "The flower can't bloom because of its surroundings."
Alfreda Pearson, now 52, was clear - and remains clear - about her family's legacy. "They knew they had to fight hard, and it was right. That made a big impact on me, their righteousness.
"I admire them to this day and value what they've done. When I see a challenge, I think of my grandfather and Uncle Hammitt and I step back in the picture."
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