King was not the only influential leader, professor says
Donaldson focused on the hardships South Carolina experienced throughout the Civil Rights movement and emphasized how little most students know about what actually took place.
"I'm going to begin with something that most professors should not begin with on the first day of class," he said. "I'm going to start with a pop quiz."
Nervous laughter sounded off around the room as Donaldson asked students what they knew about the civil rights struggle in South Carolina.
One of the preeminent and most recognized leaders in the movement was Martin Luther King, Jr., but the names Donaldson rattled off were those of other leaders most students in the room hadn't heard of.
That's significant, because though most people know the main ideas of the Civil Rights movement and its history, few know about how many South Carolinians helped facilitate the movement or that most of its groundwork was set by the time King was in the picture.
"People don't know the untold story of the Civil Rights movement and the missing, hidden aspects of South Carolina in the movement," Donaldson said.
Take, for example, Septima Poinsette Clark, a school teacher from John's Island, South Carolina who started citizenship schools that trained poor African Americans in the Deep South how to read.
Or consider Benjamin Elijah Mays, of Ninety Six, S.C., who mentored King himself, or Joseph DeLaine, of Clarendon County, who was the leader in starting the case of Brown v. The Board of Education.
Clark, Mays and DeLaine were just a few of the key figures and motivators of the Civil Rights movement that students had never learned about until hearing Donaldson speak.
"We don't talk about any of it," said Alexzena Irving Furgess, a former instructor at USC. "We don't talk about history. You can't read about it because it's not in the history books."
Furgess, a member of the audience, remembered graduating from high school with straight A's — and being barred from attending USC because of her race. Furgess said she didn't learn anything she knows from a history book, gathering it instead from word of mouth and experience.
Donaldson's goal was to inform his audience of the large influence and importance the state had during the civil rights movement, he said.
"People feel South Carolina isn't important and that violence didn't take place here during the civil rights movement," Donaldson said. "I have pictures and evidence that support otherwise."
Donaldson believes that to fully understand King you need to know him and understand the collective force that was the civil rights movement. That is, to understand him, it's integral to understand the impact South Carolinians had in aiding the civil rights movement.
"You need to pay attention to everything that's happening around you," said Furgess. "You're not going to learn what you need to from a history book."