Harold Boulware House

Front inscription

This was the adult home of pioneering S.C. civil rights attorney Harold R. Boulware (1913-1982). Born and raised in Irmo, Boulware attended Harbison Institute where his parents were both teachers. In 1938 he obtained his law degree from Howard Univ. He began practicing in Columbia around 1940. He became chief counsel for the S.C. NAACP in 1941. He moved to this site in the early 1950s to care for his parents. The extant home dates to 1956.

Reverse inscription

Boulware worked cases that equalized Black teacher pay (1944-46) and yielded such landmark rulings as Elmore v. Rice (1947), which ended S.C.’s white primary system, and Briggs v. Elliott, one of five cases in 1954 led the U.S. Supreme Court to find school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. Later a Richland County judge, Boulware lived in this house from 1956 until his death in 1983.