RISING WEIGHT OF POVERTY ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
[This ran without hyperlinks at The Greenville News (November 1, 2013) and The Charleston Post & Courier (November 4, 2013)]
According to 1860 census data, South Carolina had the highest percentage (57.2%) of its population as slaves in the U.S. Beaufort County (82.8%) and Georgetown County (85.7%) represented the significant impact of slave populations along the coast.
The legacy of the scar of slavery in SC remains in the form of I-95 and what is now recognized as the “Corridor of Shame”—a collection of public schools bordering that interstate highway and serving in some of the highest poverty areas of SC.
Another legacy of the South is school segregation. A 2012 report from The Civil Rights project detailed the rise of re-segregated schools across the South:
Black and Latino students in the South attend schools defined by double isolation by both race and poverty. The South reports high overall shares of students living in poverty, but students of