The Modjeska Simkins School is now accepting applications for its 11th spring semester, which runs from March 2 through June 22. Classes meet Monday evenings at GROW — our HQ in Columbia — as well as on Zoom and via live broadcast at five satellite sites.
Expanding on last year’s success with our partners in Sumter and Penn Center, this year we have added remote sites in Orangeburg, Pendleton, and the Native American Studies Center in Lancaster. These in-person options let more students have the collaborative experience that is central to the program.
“The satellite sites broaden access to the school and help build community outside of our Columbia base,” said Brett Bursey, executive director of the SC Progressive Network, which launched the school in 2015. “You deepen the experience by sharing the experience,” he said. “The course covers challenging subjects, and it is good to have people to help process the material.”
Network staff member James Felder facilitated operations at the Sumter site last semester. “People in Sumter have heard from graduates, and are anxiously awaiting the spring semester,” he said. “People who have been through the program are our best messengers.”
Dr. Robert Greene II, a tenured professor at Claflin University and president of the national African American Intellectual History Society, has served as the Modjeska School’s lead instructor since 2019. “This year’s session of the Modjeska Simkins School comes at a time of both great peril and great promise for our state and our nation,” he said. “Learning the true history of South Carolina’s past can be inspiring and up-lifting.”
The curriculum reflects the Network’s nonpartisan strategy, focused intentionally and specifically on South Carolina, which continues to play an over-sized role in our nation’s politics.
“As we approach the 250th anniversary of America’s founding by revolutionaries, South Carolinians need and deserve to hear and learn more truth, not less,” said education expert and Network board member Cecil Cahoon. “Guided by the example of our own civil rights icon Modjeska Monteith Simkins, the school offers the unvarnished truth about defining events in the people’s history of our state. You won’t learn as much truth about our past — and how to improve its future — elsewhere.”
This unique and everevolving master class is led by guest presenters who are some of the state and nation’s leading writers, historians, professors, and activists. It is a curriculum unlike any in South Carolina. While we welcome students of all backgrounds and ages (our youngest was 14) the course is not for everyone. It covers mature, difficult topics, and requires hours of outside study each week.
If you love history, want to be a more effective citizen or grass roots activist, are a retired person wanting to connect with others in your community, or are a transplant who wants to know more about your adopted home state, this course is for you.
Throughout the semester, the school also offers Deep Dives, Sunday afternoon programs held in Columbia and broadcast on Zoom. They are free and open to the public. To receive notices of the programs, sign up for the Network’s email list or bookmark GROW’s calendar.
For details, see modjeskaschool.com. There you will find a list of instructors, the spring class schedule, and an application.
Full tuition is $500. Payment plans and some scholarship assistance is available.
