Clarendon County · Marker 14-26
Pearson Family Homesite
1853 L and H Pearson Rd., Manning vicinity
Front inscription
This farm was home to the family of Levi Pearson (1894-1970), who with his brother, Hammett Pearson, joined other African American parents in Davis Station and Jordan protesting Clarendon Co. Schools' refusal in the mid-1940s to transport their children to Scott’s Branch H.S. (7.7 mi. W) in Summerton. For several years, parents jointly bought, maintained, and drove their own bus without county support.
Pearson v. Clarendon Co.
On June 22, 1947, Rev. J.A. DeLaine came here and recruited Levi Pearson to file an NAACP-backed lawsuit for equal transportation in the county’s segregated schools. Though dismissed, Pearson v. Clarendon Co. led to one of the five cases decided in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling, Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Despite local backlash, Pearson never moved from this lot, bought in 1933.