The Modjeska Monteith Simkins  Home

Jill K. Hanson

Modjeska Simkins' career began in 1921 when, upon completion of her bachelor's degree at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, she became a teacher at Columbia's Booker T. Washington High School. In 1931, she became the state's only full-time, statewide Black public health worker when she was appointed as Director of Negro Work for the South Carolina Anti-tuberculosis Association. As Director, she expanded the organization's role to include not only the treatment of tuberculosis, but also the prevention of venereal disease, pellagra, infant and maternal mortality, and insanitation through nursing and education programs. This work alerted Simkins to the need for social and political reform in the state's African-American community. 

Simkins lost her position with the Association in 1942, partly due to pressure from white Association leaders, who disapproved of her increasing involvement with the South Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Simkins' work with the NAACP began when, as a teenager, she attended meetings with her mother. As chair of the program committee and member of the executive board for the Columbia NAACP, Simkins helped found the statewide organization, becoming the only female founder and officer of the South Carolina NAACP. She served as secretary of the group from 1941 to 1957, helping win teacher salary equalization lawsuits in the cities of Sumter and Columbia, writing news articles for the Associated Negro Press, raising funds, educating African-Americans about voting, and covering a statewide speaking circuit. Perhaps her most significant work took place in 1950 with the South Carolina federal district court case of Briggs v. Elliott. Simkins helped write the declaration for the school lawsuit asking for the equalization of black and white schools in Clarendon County, South Carolina. The case became one of several individual cases to directly challenge the "separate but equal" doctrine, leading to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas Supreme Court decision. 

Throughout her career in social reform, Simkins used her private residence as her primary office as well as a meeting place and lodging for fellow workers who were often denied rooms in segregated Columbia hotels. Constructed sometime between 1895 and 1919, the simple, vernacular style house reflects the traits of many southern residences from the early twentieth century. The Simkins family purchased the house in 1932, with only minor improvements made over the years until Modjeska Simkins' death in 1992. 

Efforts to recognize the significance of the house began a year after Simkins' death. The house was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on March 25, 1994, followed by a nomination to the South Carolina State Historic Preservation Office's list of the state's most endangered historic sites. Although the house was not included in the list, the nomination alerted supporters of African-American historic preservation to the threat of demolition of the structure. In 1995, the Collaborative for Community Trust, a non-profit organization in Columbia dedicated to addressing issues of social change, chose the stabilization and adaptive use of the house as its first project. The group has raised $60,000 towards the purchase of the house, winning a stabilization grant from the South Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, and receiving funds from the city of Columbia to help convert the house into the organization's headquarters and a museum about Simkins and her work. The group has received additional support from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Historic Columbia Foundation, Columbia Housing Authority, and the Historic Charleston Foundation. 

Preserving Modjeska Simkins' home is one of several efforts across the country to save sites associated with local female leaders of the civil rights movement. In Topeka, Kansas, the Lucinda Todd house has been preserved to recognize her role as secretary of the local NAACP and the person who alerted the national organization to the case against the Topeka school board. Another site associated with a local female activist, the Juanita J. Craft house in Dallas, Texas, was willed to the city and is now being used as a museum and education center about the civil rights movement in that city and state. Houses like the Simkins, Todd, and Craft residences exist throughout the country. In combination, the houses associated with local female leaders of the civil rights movement relate the key importance of women's local activism to the success of the national movement. 

[ Editor's note: The Modjeska Simkins property, formerly managed by The Collaborative for Community Trust, is now managed by the Historic Columbia Foundation. The Modjeska Simkins property is located at 2025 Marion St. Columbia, SC. ]

Jill K. Hanson is an historian in the SouthEast Regional Office of the National Park Service. This article is a partial abstract of the author's M.A. thesis: Jill K. Hanson, " 'A Room of One's Own:' Preserving Twentieth-Century Women's History in Columbia, South Carolina," Master's thesis, University of South Carolina, 1994. Additional information was provided by the Collaborative for Community Trust and the South Carolina State Historic Preservation Office.