Third World Press

Clarendon County, a rural community in South Carolina, was the battleground of Black sharecroppers, domestic workers, laborers, and clergymen who joined the NAACP to fight for better schools for Black children. This small and mighty group were brave visionaries, and their 1951 lawsuit, Briggs v. Elliott, was the first of five cases that led to the breakthrough 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.

Aesthetic Realism associate and journalist, Alice Bernstein, has re-visited and revitalized these almost forgotten people, and the play by Ossie Davis based on their triumphant achievement. Bernstein, moved by the tenacity and wisdom of the people of Clarendon County and the stirring and poignant work of Davis, discovered that the actions of these people, and Davis\'s play is the realization of the philosophy, Aesthetic Realism, the belief that human beings can be taught to see each other and reality fairly.

The People of Clarendon County intertwines history and drama. Read this book and understand who the people of Clarendon County were, what they wanted, why they forced the United States to determine segregation unconstitutional, and how all of this further validates the tenets of Aesthetic Realism.