♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Narrator> History is often told from a distance, prioritizing dates, decisions and declarations and dignitaries.

But history is not only found in official records, it's shaped in kitchens and classrooms, in churches and beauty shops, and preserved in the memories of women who encountered history at different ages and understood it in different ways.

Corine Johnson was born in 1927.

By World War II, she was already working, already learning what it meant to navigate segregation as a young Black woman.

>> Well, back in those days, we was... segregated.

In 1936, we had to walk to Monetta, South Carolina, to work on the farm And where I'm living at now was a cotton field.

There were a lot of cotton fields in Batesburg, and corn fields.

A lot of farming was going on around Batesburg.

So that meant we had to leave home around about three in the morning.

Sometimes we didn't walk back home, we stayed in the, in the shed, but I was too small to pick the cotton.

♪ So what I had to do was carry water from the well.

They drew the well water up, and then I had to take it to them to drink while they was working in the field.

Well, in the days when I came along, we, as children, we showed a lot of honor and respect to our parents.

Whenever they tell you to do something or try to do something, you did it with a smile.

You didn't talk back at your parents, or when they tell you to bring some water to them to drink, you pour that water out that, that bucket or whatever it was, and you take it to them so they can drink.

♪ Narrator> Celestine Parson was born in 1938.

The war ended before she was old enough to understand it, but its consequences shaped the school she attended and the choices her family would make.

>> We were fighting for better education, and better facilities for the children's, children in that county.

My family always, you know, they were always like, into whatever was happening with the colored folk, they would say in the South, that's what was instilled in me.

They were always, you know, doing things for our race.

My grandparents got the 40 acres and a mule and that whole thing.

The two families both had properties and we had means and ways of growing stuff and helping the neighbors and whomever else that didn't have.

They just always had something to share.

And my grandfather was the person that every time someone came to the house, for whatever the reason was, he'd say, you know, like you're hungry or you'd like to have this some bread or some whatever.

And my grandmother was always baking something.

There were always muffins or some kind of cake or some kind of cookies or whatever.

And if he could have fed the country, I think he would have done it.

>> It's almost impossible to talk about the success of the Civil Rights Movement in our country without talking about the invaluable role of young men and women who were coming of age during the period of Jim Crow, who lived and witnessed segregation.

Corine> I went to school here in Batesburg, right in this territory.

It was a wooden school then, and we had to walk to school.

We couldn't ride the school busses.

And when I got into supposed to be in the first grade, the school burned down.

And then we had to go to school and the churches ♪ World War II started.

And it took four years before we could get a new school.

And I was 12 years old in the sixth grade.

The first school was a wooden school, but we was in a brick school the second time.

They had bathrooms in that, the second school.

Narrator> In towns like Batesburg, Black children attended segregated schools that were often under funded and overcrowded.

Similar conditions existed across South Carolina, nearly 70 miles away in Clarendon County families faced many of the same challenges - long walks to school, aging buildings, and limited resources.

Celestine> I don't recall there being a lunch room.

I remember bringing lunch basically from home.

I remember sitting you know, those, a school desk.

I remember sitting in one with someone.

It was difficult for any outdoor activity, even going to the bathrooms if it was raining, if it was whatever it might have been doing, you had to either sit and hold it until you know, or you could get up and you have to go out in that and you'd have to carry an umbrella or something with you.

And then when you get in, get inside, it was all like wet, the floors and the seat, the everything was, you know it was, ♪ it was a horror story.

Narrator> Celestine was not alone in remembering these conditions.

Her classmate Beatrice Brown Rivers attended Scotts Branch School during the same years.

>> The conditions when I started school were very, very bad.

Um, the building itself wasn't bad, but there was no indoor plumbing, no heat, central heat, no, we didn't have janitorial service.

None of that.

And we had two outdoor toilets, one for guys and one for girls.

One big open space with no privacy sections or any of that.

So it was pretty bad.

Kids had to build fires... for the classrooms to be warm.

Those are the kinds of things that were happening then.

And also there was no bus transportation for the kids in Summerton.

Dr.

Donaldson> When Ms.

Johnson was in school at the Batesburg Colored School, and when Ms.

Parson was at the Scotts Branch School, they likely were reading textbooks assigned during that period.

And there is a famous book called The Sims History of South Carolina.

Nearly every Black and White child in the state had to read that book.

They were taught that book.

And in that book, the take away was that slavery was a good institution.

That Reconstruction was a terrible travesty and that Black people were content in their condition.

That is a textbook, they're reading, that is the textbook that is socializing them during this time period.

And here you have two young colored girls saying, this book does not reflect who I am.

♪ ♪ Narrator> As the 1940s began, another force began reshaping daily life across the South.

The United States entered World War II and communities felt the impact almost immediately.

For many Black families, the war brought both sacrifice and expectation - the belief that service abroad might lead to greater freedom at home.

Corine> Wasn't no boys going to school, much cause all those who got big enough, they volunteered, or was drafted to go into service.

It did change a lot of them when they went to Northern states, ♪ taking basic training.

And my husband went in service, and he said he peeled potatoes all the way from Chicago to California.

They didn't treat the Black soldiers like they treated the others.

Dr.

Donaldson> There was a war to fight, to preserve democracy abroad.

Well, Corine Johnson and other Black people are saying, Great, we will support the defense of democracy abroad with the hope and the assurance that democracy will be protected and defended at home.

When many soldiers come home, they're looking for the promises.

We have defended this nation.

Many people have lost their lives in Europe and in the Pacific Theater who are now coming home with their uniforms, with their veteran's cards saying, where is freedom?

Where is democracy?

And those soldiers who come to Columbia are reminded, you may have fought abroad, you will not sit at this lunch counter.

You may have fought abroad, but you will ride the back of the bus.

♪ Corine> I graduated in 1945 from high school.

I wanted to go to college, but my parents couldn't afford to put me in college.

A lot of people was confused about World War II, ♪ and the finances because Blacks wasn't making no money worth nothing.

But during the war, the women had to get up and do more work than they used to do, because most of the men were gone.

♪ And soon as you got boys big enough to go in service, they enlisted or they was drafted.

So the lady folks had to do most of everything.

My next step, I got a job at the Carolina Theater as a cashier in the back of the theater, cause we couldn't go downstairs at the theater like the Whites did.

They had them going upstairs in the back.

Dr.

Donaldson> In Batesburg, we put a historical marker some years ago in the downtown square of Batesburg, to commemorate and to mark the place where Isaac Woodard was beaten in February of 1946, a story of a blinded soldier that many people did not know about whose blinding transformed this country.

At the end of that gathering, we went to a building and had a reception.

And across the room I saw and I heard an older Black woman recounting what she witnessed, not what she read about what she witnessed, on February 12th, 1946.

♪ And her name is Corine Johnson.

Narrator> Corine was 18 years old when she witnessed the beating of Isaac Woodard, a World War II veteran traveling by bus from Aiken to Batesburg.

She didn't encounter the event through headlines or history books.

She witnessed it as a young Black woman, close enough to see what state power could do to a Black veteran in uniform.

By 1946, more than 1 million Black men had served in World War II.

Many returned as decorated soldiers, including Woodard, a noncommissioned officer and sergeant who led troops overseas.

But in the Jim Crow South Military rank didn't guarantee civilian protection.

Uniforms often were treated not as symbols of service, but as acts of defiance.

Corine> I was a witness for the man that was in service, and he got beat when he got off the bus.

I was a cashier at the theater, ♪ and I was right there by the railroad track.

There's a guy, come across the railroad and telling me it's a soldier being beat up.

Narrator> Isaac Woodard was a United States Army sergeant who had just been honorably discharged after serving in the Philippines.

On February 12th, 1946, while traveling by bus from Georgia to his home in North Carolina to see his wife, he was arrested in Batesburg, South Carolina.

During the trip, he asked the driver if a stop would allow enough time to use the restroom.

The driver responded with profanity.

After Woodard objected to the disrespect, he returned to his seat.

At the next stop, he was ordered off the bus and turned over to the local police chief and other officers.

He was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.

He was beaten and later blinded while in custody.

Corine> And I left the ticket box, and I went out there across the railroad track and I was looking at ♪ the two policemen were beating this soldier and had him down by the drugstore, and he couldn't get up.

But he had just come from overseas.

♪ And they carried him to the jail and they finished beating him there.

But they make like it happened in Aiken And it didn't happen in Aiken.

It happened in Batesburg.

And I still remember from long time ago, but me being a 18 year old.

<mmmm-hmmm> and had a job, I had left my job to get out there on the railroad track and see somebody getting beat.

But that's all I know.

I didn't know whether he was a soldier then, and I didn't know who it was.

I went back to my job.

What he got, he let his family know what had happened, and it didn't happen in Aiken.

And that's all I knew about it then.

♪ I didn't have to talk about it.

Because I didn't know who the soldier was.

So when that man left that bus station in Aiken County, ♪ he had his eyes.

That's the way they used to do a long time ago.

They beat you up and put you in jail.

Dr.

Donaldson> People in Batesburg didn't really know what she witnessed.

And someone would say, well, Ms.

Johnson, we didn't know you knew all this.

And she said, y'all never asked.

You never asked.

And that was a lesson learned.

Narrator> Despite national outrage and testimony from witnesses, the officer responsible was acquitted by an all White jury.

The case would later help galvanize civil rights advocacy.

Dr.

Donaldson> All the evidence was clear and convincing that these White police officers wrongly assaulted and beat and blinded Isaac Woodard.

According to some, this was a road to Damascus moment for Judge Waring.

He said clearly, I need now to pursue civil rights and be a champion for it.

And so it's no irony that the next major case that Judge Waring took on was a case called Briggs versus Elliott.

Narrator> In 1951, Celestine was 13 when her family joined the Briggs versus Elliott petition.

From there, she learned early the cost of insisting on dignity.

Celestine> Benny Murray Parson Sr.

and my grandfather, he was, you know, because they, they spoke to, came to him and says to him about, take your boy, tell your boy to take his name off of that thing.

And that's what they called it.

And he's, you know, he spit this little tobacco juice on the ground and he says, let me tell you, first of all, he said, I don't have a boy.

I have a man.

He says, and he will eat dirt, he said, before he take his name off the petition.

He was that committed.

He was, that was him.

Yes.

Dr.

Donaldson> He is just one example of these individuals who Dr.

King called, those who are willing to suffer for, for righteousness sake.

He said, we talk about the Who's Who of the Movement, but most of those in the Movement were those who never made the headlines.

And Celestine Parson and Corine Johnson are two of those people.

Celestine> Fix the situation.

I mean, you got, you had to get with whoever was in charge of whatever and try to come to some kind of a conclusion about something because those things just, you know, it just couldn't continue going.

Basically my family, how we grew up, what their beliefs were and what their intentions for me or what you know, whatever else was.

And it wasn't just like, my mother and father or my grandmother and grandfather.

It was my aunts and uncles.

And every day everybody was like, you know, get your education.

That's one way to, you know, you got, that's how you get ahead, how you get along in this world.

That, that whole lawsuit started out being 200 and something people.

It was a whole lot of people or whatever.

But with the reprisals and things of that nature, it just like dwindled down because there was just so many things that they were denied.

And a lot of people couldn't, they had to do whatever the other race basically wanted them to because they had no other means of doing anything.

I remember a whole lot of changing, the grocery stores and the whatever else's, whatever store it was, they had a list of all these petitioners... and when you, when you, and they basically knew my family were kind of like, you know, well known around there.

They didn't sell us anything.

You couldn't get anything.

you couldn't buy anything in the city, because when you go into stores, they, they had, they had a list and they'd look on there.

And for some reason my family was like well known, you know, in the neighborhood, you know.

They knew my dad and whatever else.

But you'd have to go into the one of the, the other counties, you know, to, to buy stuff.

Everybody was denied.

They had to move away and all of that stuff ♪ We were a marked family, and they even came to our house this night looking for the little lost boy.

If my father was there, was at home, they would have taken him out and beat him, do whatever you wanted to do with him.

That's what they meant, because he had his name on that thing, because that's what they used to call it, the petition.

Dr.

Donaldson> Signing the petition meant what?

It meant, that one, you were critical of the, of the status quo, and you were also critical of the White leadership.

And many of those White leaders were your employers.

They were the ones who had, controlled your loans.

And so it was a sacrifice.

And these families were the ones who said, "Send us.

We'll go", including the Parson.

So Celestine Parson is the daughter of two persons in that community who said, we'll sacrifice.

Celestine> I went to Morris College for a while until, you know, we couldn't do that anymore.

So we came to New York.

We had to because there was no way to, you know, to do anything else.

And especially after they came to the house that they were looking for this, little lost boy and all that carrying on.

So, you know, we had to get out of there.

That's unusual, extraordinary, and especially for Black folk in South Carolina, you know, to take that kind of stand, what this small town of mainly, mostly Black folk had the nerves and whatever the courage to step forward and make this happen.

Narrator> During the 1940s and 1950s, social scientists examined how segregation affected Black children's sense of self.

At the same time, Black women across the south emphasized care, appearance, and presentation as a part of daily life, teaching girls how to see themselves with pride in a world that offered little affirmation.

Both perspectives shaped how Black girlhood was lived and understood.

For Corine, self-worth took shape through presentation.

Looking good was never frivolous.

Making women and girls feel beautiful was an act of care, of dignity, of resistance.

In a society determined to diminish Black womanhood, appearance became a language, one of visibility and mattering.

Corine> I got a job at the Carolina Theater as a cashier.

The tickets was $0.20.

And every time somebody had a quarter, they gave me a nickel, tip.

And I put that nickel tip down in that pot.

That was mine.

That's when I enrolled to beauty school.

My mother did take me to get my hair did in Columbia to the beauty shops over there in Columbia.

And I watched Amy Northrop, that's where I went.

Mama carried me there.

And when I got my hair did, I'll tell you this.

When I got my hair did, it was so pretty.

I put a, a cap on my head, and the next day, the hair do was gone.

And I got a whipping.

(off camera laughing) My mama tore my behind up.

And I said, if I ever get where I can dress hair, ♪ I'm going to see that those children will not put something on their head and sweat it out.

Then I had worked up time picking up hair pins for the White lady at the beauty shop I got on the bus, Greyhound bus at Batesburg.

Got off the bus at the State House, and I walked from the State House to Millwood where the beauty school was Poro's Beauty School.

Then I catched the city bus and come back from the school and catched the Greyhound bus at the bus station in Columbia, and come back and go to the theater to work.

I got my license, And it was four of us working in that beauty shop, in a barber shop.

♪ I made them look good and feel good too.

I thought every girl should learn how to look beautiful.

♪ you can look better when your hair is fixed up by somebody who know what to do.

They looking good for their man or husband or whatever it is.

♪ And I was looking good with some money in my pocket.

♪ Narrator> In 1951, social scientists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted a series of experiments.

They were designed to study how segregation shaped children's self-image.

In the experiment, Black children were presented with a White doll and a Black doll, then asked to choose the one they preferred.

They were asked questions like which one would you like to play with?

Which one is a nice doll?

Which one is a nice color?

Which doll looks bad?

These studies are often remembered for their conclusions, but less often remembered are the children themselves.

Dr.

Donaldson> The doll study was designed to look at the impact of segregation in the mindset of young children, to see if there was any damage or harm done.

Did indeed, segregation lead to an inferiority complex?

Dr.

Kenneth Clark> We found that, Black children knew that they were different, that they had lower status.

They they internalized in the development of their own self image.

These negative stereotypes of the society and majority, two out of three of the children, rejected the brown dolls as being negative and bad, etc.. Dr.

Donaldson> And the prevailing take away for decades had been yes, segregation had harmed Black students.

♪ >> I don't want the Black one.

Dr.

Kenneth Clark> The disturbing thing was when we asked them show me the doll that's most like you they then had to identify with the doll that they had rejected, and had a deep sense of their own inadequacy and inferiority at that time.

♪ Celestine> I picked the little Black doll.

Narrator> For Celestine, choosing the Black doll was not confusion or contradiction.

It was recognition.

At 13, she named herself worthy in a world invested in telling her otherwise.

Her choice was not naive.

It was informed by family, by love, by a clear understanding of who she was.

Celestine> I played with some dolls.

They were little hard, little round, nothing soft like they have the little cuddly little things now.

They had, they had, um, hard heads, and they had a little loop in the top where you could tie a little bow in it if you wanted to.

And, they were just all little White dolls.

I would have loved to have a Black doll.

(laughs) And then my grandfather, he would always say, "Don't forget, "he says that you're not a White child," He said, "You're playing with these Black dolls."

He said, "Well you are considered Black."

He said, "If you go, wherever, you might want to go."

He said, you know, "You'll be Black."

>> So when the Briggs case is going before federal trial in Charleston, ♪ Robert Carter, who was one of the lead attorneys for the NAACP, knew Kenneth Clark, Dr Kenneth Clark.

Robert Carter said "We need to, we need evidence to show "the harm being done to Black students.

"We need social scientists "to provide the data that shows this."

And they approached Clark to say, "Do you believe that you could replicate "the doll study in Summerton?"

Dr.

Kenneth Clark> We did not do the study for the court.

We did the study as psychologists, but the lawyers of the NAACP, when they read our reports and studies said that they thought it was quite relevant to the case of segregation and the effects of segregation on personality.

Dr.

Donaldson> Children in Scott's Branch are identified to become subjects to the Kenneth Clark Study.

Many of the students picked the White doll in the affirmative and the Black doll in the negative.

We sent a team of researchers to the Library of Congress to pull the research records of Kenneth Clark's doll study.

And we found the written summaries of the students from Scott's Branch.

And one interview that stood out to me was an interview of a 12 or 13 year old named Celestine Parson.

Celestine viewed the good doll as Black, the beautiful doll as Black.

All the positive attributes were the Black doll, Dr.

Kenneth Clark> I found, by the way, that in our studies we did have some children who had parents or other adults who helped them in this and they did not reject the brown doll.

It can be done.

You can teach children to respect themselves as a basis for respecting their fellow human beings.

Celestine Reenactor> My name is Celestine Parson.

I am 13 years old.

Interviewer> Which doll do you like best?

Celestine Reenactor> The Black doll.

Interviewer> Why?

Celestine Reenactor> Because I like my race - My own color.

Dr.

Donaldson> And she made it very clear that she was a proud Black woman, a Negro girl.

Celestine Reenactor> I like being a colored person.

It was intended by God that we be colored.

We couldn't help ourselves if God wanted us to be colored.

It's just his will.

Dr.

Donaldson> She made it clear that things were wrong Interviewer> Is your school a good school?

Celestine Reenactor> In some ways... I don't know... not a good school.

It just doesn't have the right kind of bathroom.

There's no gym, no hot lunch, and the playground isn't safe.

Dr.

Donaldson> So there's also a qualitative assessment.

And in the qualitative assessment, she said, we need to push for change, even if it means going to court.

Celestine Reenactor> We should ask White trustees to do something about it.

If they don't, we have to do something else.

I think we should consult some of the legislative authorities about it.

♪ Narrator> After the war, Corine turned skill into shelter building a beauty shop that underwrote futures.

Corine> The woman that had been in service.

Her name was Emma Lindsey.

We had an organization, of all the beauticians in the state of South Carolina.

We joined that club.

We had parties and banquets and dances, put our monies together, and we helped other beauticians open up other beauty shops.

We helped Jim Clyburn's mother.

She was a hairdresser.

She lived in Sumter.

And when he was going to college, we beauticians raised money to help her with her son to go to college.

♪ We used to go up to Sumter, South Carolina.

She had meetings, and all we had to do was put our heads together and our finances together.

And we went from city to city, having conventions.

Dr.

Donaldson> You forget that cosmetology was a trade.

It was not just a hobby.

You received professional training and instruction on beauty culture, on how to handle hair, on makeup.

And so... Ms Corine Johnson is a trained, licensed cosmetologist, and she's extremely proud of that.

When she comes to Columbia on Saturdays during the height of segregation, she comes to Washington Street, which was a bustling Black enclave.

And at 1119 and a half, upstairs was the classic beauty shop, which was owned by Ms.

Amy Northrup, But when she climbs the steps to the right is the law office of Harold Boulware.

Below it is, a juke joint and a cafe.

So she's seeing all of blackness in that one building.

And she's also aware that Amy Northrup is a mentor who is training her not only in business, but in networking and socializing.

And so the Black cosmetologists and Black barbers is a strong trade And so they raised money for the students downtown in demonstrations.

They're raising money for people to get homes.

They're raising money when, when a new family emerges or a new child emerges and they're raising money to send kids to school.

And they all lent their monies to support the Jim Clyburns to go to school, and all were very proud because they were, they were convinced that Jim Clyburn's degree was their degree.

♪ Corine> Well I had the, the business people, and you had to have a little pleasure for them to enjoy themselves.

So I got a piccolo to go, in the, in the shop.

♪ And when they come in there, to get their hair did, they was putting them nickels in them piccolos and getting happy.

And while they were getting happy, I was dressing hair, curling hair, just by the music.

I started selling wigs and people started wearing wigs.

They wasn't coming to get no hair do much.

I put a bathroom in my shop and those ladies come and got their hair did, took their bath and brought me food and whatever I needed.

I had a wonderful time.

♪ Dr.

Donaldson> Here are Black women in the heart of segregation, in the heart of Jim Crow, in the heart of challenges and struggles enjoying themselves.

And that's instructive because the assumption is everybody is, woe is me or everyone is a swing low, sweet chariot.

And that's not the case.

They've found spaces.

They've found moments to enjoy themselves, to almost close out the world of oppression.

And those beauty shops became just that, where they could close out all the noise of Jim Crow, all the noise of White supremacy and celebrate blackness, celebrate Black people.

Narrator> For Celestine, education in faith became portable institutions, structures she carried with her when staying became impossible.

By the early 1950s, the push for equal education had moved beyond private conversations.

Families who signed the Briggs petition were now publicly challenging segregation - and in a small town, their names were known.

Dr.

Donaldson> When Brown v Board is going forward to the courts, people are nervous.

There are the reprisals.

And so they now know.

They now see the name Benny Parson and Plumy Parson They know where they live and they begin to take notice.

And so almost family by family, people are marked.

People are fired from their jobs.

People lose their loans.

People don't have the implements to bring in their crops.

Celestine> Yeah, we met in St Mark and then Liberty Hill was another, bigger Methodist Church that was, you know, in the area.

And my church was a, the Taw Caw Baptist church.

And they spoke about it in the churches.

They had days when they would have like food days like food basket days or whatever, people that had lost jobs or whatever the situation was, you would go and you would, you know, get food from that food basket.

And there was some people that came to our house and know that we had, like, they had, you know, like the white potatoes, yams and vegetables and whatever else.

My grandmother used to do a lot of canning.

She'd have little jars of stuff, you know, and, they'd come by and say they were, had nothing else.

And there was tears coming down their face.

And, my father would fix up his bag of stuff for, and then my grandfather, he'd be out doing his thing and he'd make another bag and he'd just put that in their car.

And by the time he, you know, they were ready to leave, they had, they had food to eat with it.

We fed a lot of, they fed quite a bit of people.

♪ Narrator> Beauty shops and churches were more than gathering places.

They were institutions built in response to exclusion, spaces where Black women controlled the terms of care, education and economic survival.

They were not supplemental to civic life.

They were civic life.

Dr.

Donaldson> Ms.

Parson-Lloyd and Ms.

Johnson were two young women coming in the age of Jim Crow, who started asking questions.

Why?

Why does this exist?

Why must we endure?

And then they started asking questions.

What can we do to fix this?

What can we do to challenge this?

And they are really emblematic of a generation of Black people who were living during segregation, who witnessed, who experienced, who endured and said, we're dissatisfied, that we want to envision a different future, and we want to fight for it.

Dr.

Kenneth Clark> It will take more than laws.

It will take more than court decisions.

Obviously churches haven't been particularly effective in helping people to be more humane in their relationship with their fellow human beings.

And...my feeling is that we will need a wide and deep approach to educating our children not to be hostile and inhumane.

Celestine> And I told them whatever they do, stay in school, graduate and let's get going.

Don't sit down back and say, I'm going to go wash dishes in some place over here, or do something over here, whatever, She says, you got it here, because my grandfather was another one that used to always, you know, promote that.

He says, you know, you got to, you got to get it up here, he says, because other than that, he says, you, you ain't going to get along, he says, you know, you got to have it up here.

And, and then, you know, he told my... also said that, he was sending, they were sending me to school because they were saying that I couldn't ride a bus, and all this old stuff.

And he said that, that they were sending me to school not to get anything in my feet, but to get something in my head.

You have to fight for what you think is right.

You can't be influenced by someone else.

Whatever you feel is the thing to do, you know, follow your mind and don't be influenced by other people.

♪ And just keep the faith and think about what, how, how they are, where they are right now in the school that they in and whatever.

It was all done by Black people in Clarendon County and they were doing for the benefit and the welfare of the Black people in that community.

Corine> And we need to do the best that we can with what we can do well.

♪ And you can do it.

♪ Well, whenever I'm gone, I can't carry that beauty shop with me.

But I want it left for somebody else to get, training and keep it even when I'm gone, and improve it.

Don't just let it sit there and go down.

♪ Somebody else will take good training there.

or be glad to help with the job there, ♪ even if I'm gone, because I done did my part.

Well, I used to be a beautician, and I used to be a cosmetologist, but I'm just plain old Corine Johnson.

♪ Narrator> Corine Johnson and Celestine Parson were young women in segregated South Carolina when history crossed their paths.

One witnessed a moment that would awaken a nation.

The other became a part of a legal challenge that helped transform American schools.

Their stories remind us that history does not live only in textbooks.

It lives in memory.

And sometimes the voices that carry it are still with us.

(silence) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Just, a closer walk with thee.

♪ Grant, grant it, Jesus, it is my plea.

♪ Daily Daily walking close with Thee, Oh, Lord.

Let it be dear Lord, let it be.

Oh, oh.

I am weak but Thou art strong; ♪ Jesus, keep me keep me from all wrong; ♪ I'll be satisfied as long Oh Lord, let it be.

Dear Lord, Let it be Oh, Just a closer walk, just a closer walk, just a closer walk with thee.

Grant, grant it Jesus, it is my plea.

♪ Daily, daily walking close with thee, Oh, Lord Let it be.

Dear Lord, let it be.

Producer> Amen.

Amen.

(applause) Might as well say, Amen.

Crew> I know that's right.

Alright.

How about the mics team?

Crew> Are we good?