Dr. Robert Greene II awards Bernadette R. Hampton her diploma at last year's Modjeska Simkins School graduation
If you’ve been thinking about attending the Modjeska Simkins School, you have until Wednesday, Feb. 25, to apply. If you sign up, you will be joining what’s shaping up to be a diverse and dynamic class.
It includes teachers, musicians, veterans, a waitress, a Baptist minister, a truck driver, a biochemist, retirees of all manner, and Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation.
They will participate online from Berkeley, CA; Skokie, IL; Bloomfield CT; Dumas, AR, and from towns across South Carolina — Florence, Saluda, Liberty, Indian Land, Pendleton, and Hollywood, among others.
Others will gather at GROW in Columbia, where classes will be broadcast live to groups at the school’s satellite sites (listed below).
SC Progressive Network board member Cecil Cahoon is heading up the school’s enrollment process.“Most of the applicants have told us a couple of important things,” he said. “One is that they crave understanding details about South Carolina's history that explain how we got to where we are in our social, economic, and political cultures — things they know they didn't learn in school. And the second is that they want to know how to get involved with others to create positive change in our communities and state. The combination of these two interests makes this group ideal for the 11th session of the Modjeska School because our school offers the information and the community they seek. And there's no time like the present.”
Guided by the example of South Carolina's civil rights icon Modjeska Monteith Simkins, the school is a master class in history and applied democracy taught by nationally renowned historians, authors, attorneys, advocates, and other modern-day revolutionaries.
Dr. Robert Greene II, a tenured professor at Claflin University and president of the national African American Intellectual History Society, has served as the 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. We need that now.”
“In the last ten years, Over 400 students have graduated from this unique master class in personal and collective liberation,” said Network Director Brett Bursey. “Since working with Ms. Simkins for 19 years, her mentorship continues to inspire and inform us. We think she would approve of the anti-partisan, nonviolent war college we have created to help reconstruct democracy in South Carolina.”
As we approach the 250th anniversary of America’s founding by revolutionaries, South Carolina’s need and deserve to hear and learn more truth, not less. There are no bolder transmitters of truth than public school teachers, which is why the school is offering free resources and scholarships to SC teachers.
Bernadette R. Hampton, a Beaufort County school teacher and former president of the SC Education Association, graduated from the Modjeska School last year. “I learned that heroes like Robert Smalls and other Black legislators during Reconstruction wrote a new state Constitution in 1868 that — for the first and last time — guaranteed equal, public education to every child in South Carolina.
Today’s Jim Crow Constitution of 1895 has been amended to offer “minimally adequate education.” Sadly, the quality of that education is not equal but rather dictated by a child’s zip code. I strongly encourage teachers — especially retirees— to take advantage of the opportunity to attend the spring session.”
Classes meet Monday evenings 6:30–8:30 March 2 – June 22. Orientation is Feb. 28.
See modjeskaschool.com for more about the school, the class schedule, tuition fees, and the application form.
The school is transformative, but don't take our word for it. Watch this clip from last year's graduation. What did they learn?
• Modjeska Simkins School 2026 Sites •
Columbia
GROW – HQ for the SC Progressive Network and Modjeska Simkins School
1340 Elmwood Avenue
Charleston
CAFE
6296 Rivers Avenue
Machinist Union Office Suite 310<
North Charleston
Lancaster
University of South Carolina – Lancaster
Native American Studies Center
119 South Main Street
Orangeburg
CASA Education Center
646 John C. Calhoun Drive
Pendleton
First Baptist Church
351 South Broad Street
St. Helena Island
Penn Center
Martin Luther King Drive
Sumter
University of South Carolina – Sumter
200 Miller Road