The two SC schools named after Confederate general Wade Hampton could be renamed
Two high schools in South Carolina are named after Wade Hampton III, a former governor, Confederate officer and slaveholder — and both could see their names changed, but for different reasons.
Neighboring Hampton County is home to Wade Hampton High School in Varnville, which will be consolidated with Estill High as soon as next year and possibly renamed.
The other, Wade Hampton High in Greenville County, has been the subject of debate around its namesake, a discussion revived after the nation reacted to the murder of George Floyd by police and subsequent protests around police violence.
A petition created by 16-year-old student Asha Marie in 2017 to change the Greenville school’s name has received more than 5,000 signatures in the past month, Greenville News reported. The petition comes despite a state law requiring legislative intervention to change the name.
Marie said she stumbled upon Hampton’s Wikipedia page while looking up her own school. There, she learned that Hampton was one of the largest slaveholders in the Southeast, and that after the Civil War he launched a successful campaign for governor that relied on “Red Shirts,” an organization of white supremacists that broke up Republican meetings and intimidated Black voters at the polls.
“The truth is that Wade Hampton III has an ugly legacy that should not be honored by the name of a school,” wrote Marie, now a college student, in a June 11 update to the petition.
“Black students should be able to participate in their high school spirit without having to be reminded of the legacy of a man who fought for their ancestors’ continued enslavement and oppression.”
Under South Carolina’s 2000 Heritage Act, local officials cannot change the names of buildings or memorials commemorating Civil War figures without two-thirds approval from the state legislature.
Local officials can still ask the legislature to consider name changes, which Clemson University’s Board of Trustees did on Friday with a request to rename Tillman Hall. But in Greenville County, officials say their hands are tied.
“It’s out of our hands, and we want to be fair,” Greenville school board chairwoman Lynda Leventis-Wells told WSPA News. “My opinion is we all want what’s best for everyone.”
In the Lowcountry, Hampton 1 Schools superintendent Ronald Wilcox said Wednesday that a similar movement hasn’t materialized to rename Varnville’s Wade Hampton High School.
The name is likely to change anyway, as the district gears up to consolidate with Hampton 2 and build a new high school.
“We have not had any discussion on this except as a matter of our impending consolidation,” Wilcox wrote Wednesday. “We are trying to get a new high school for the new consolidated school district, and no name has been selected at this time.”
According to a preliminary plan by Hampton 1 and 2, full consolidation will happen by July 2021. There’s a vast difference between the racial makeup of the county’s school systems.
Hampton 2 was a plaintiff in the 20-year suit Abbeville County School District v. State of South Carolina, in which the state Supreme Court ruled that the state was guilty of providing “minimally adequate” resources to poor, rural school districts, immortalized by the 2005 documentary “CORRIDOR OF SHAME: the neglect of South Carolina’s rural schools.”
According to a 2018 report by ProPublica, Hampton 2’s students are 97 percent non-white, compared to 57 percent of students in Hampton 1. This percent is up from 1988, when Christian Science Monitor published an investigation into white flight from the then-94 percent non-white Hampton 2 after integration.
