Career
He received a Bachelor of Arts from Allen University in 1931, working as a laborer and running a dry cleaning business to pay for his education. DeLaine worked with Modjeska Simkins and the South Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on the case Briggs v. Elliott, which became one of the five cases argued under Brown v.
Board of Education.
Briggs v. Elliott, (342 United States 350, 1952), was the first of the five cases later combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the case in which the United States. Supreme Court officially overturned racial segregation in United States. public schools.
Briggs v. Elliott challenged segregation in Summerton, South Carolina.
Due to his involvement in the case, DeLaine"s home and church were burned down. DeLaine decided to leave South Carolina, and never returned, after a warrant was issued for his arrest for returning gunfire when his parsonage later came under hostile gunfire.
He fled first to New York City and then to Buffalo, New York, where he founded another Methodist church. As a result of efforts begun in 1955, DeLaine was pardoned in 2000 by the South Carolina State Parole Board.
DeLaine also memorably taught school in South Carolina, and in 2006 was inducted into South Carolina"s Educational Hall of Honor at the University of South Carolina.
Review DeLaine and three other plaintiffs in the Briggs v. Playwright Loften Mitchell wrote a 1963 play based on DeLaine"s story titled Land Beyond the River.
lieutenant was featured, as was the case predating Brown v.
Board of Education in which DeLaine played an important role, in Alice Bernstein"s illustrated book with the same title.
