The complicated history behind Simmons Pinckney Middle School (SC)

Deanna Pan
Aug 23 2015 5:46 pm
Aug 23 9:28 pm

There are three names on the front entrance of the new middle school on Charleston’s President Street in honor of three very different men.

There’s master craftsman Philip Simmons, a beloved and renowned African-American blacksmith whose delicate wrought ironwork has come to define Charleston’s cityscape.

There’s the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a state senator and champion of civil rights, foster children and the poor, who was killed while serving his ministry at Emanuel AME Church in June.

And then there’s A.B. Rhett, son of the Confederate major Andrew Burnett Rhett, who presided as superintendent of Charleston schools for 35 years. Rhett “personified the reactionary tradition of the Charleston white elite” ...

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150823/PC16/150829694/1177/the-complicated-history-behind-simmons-pinckney-middle-school