Modjeska Monteith Simkins

Mary Modjeska Monteith was born on the fifth of December 1899 at Columbia, South Carolina, the eldest of eight children of Henry Clarence Monteith — a Black-Columbia bricklayer and the principal foreman of the Columbia Allen University bricklaying-and-construction programme — and Rachel Hull Monteith, a teacher of the Columbia Coloured Public Schools. She was raised in the Black professional Columbia of the closing decade of the post-Plessy South Carolina-Reconstruction-and-Plessy closing-period programmes.

She was placed at six at the principal Columbia Coloured Public Schools and at the Benedict College Preparatory Department at Columbia. She completed the bachelor of arts at the Benedict College at Columbia, South Carolina in 1921 — among the early Black-Benedict-College post-war graduates of the closing-period closing-period 1921 American closing-period closing-period programmes.

She taught at the Booker T. Washington High School at Columbia from 1921 to 1929 — and was forced to resign at the close of 1929 on her marriage to Andrew Whitfield Simkins under the principal closing-period closing-period 1929 South-Carolina-married-woman-teacher prohibition closing-period closing-period programmes.

She was hired in 1929 by the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association as the principal closing-period closing-period Black-public-health-and-tuberculosis-and-anti-tuberculosis-and-Black-Health-Education senior organiser of the closing-period closing-period 1929 to 1942 American-Black-Public-Health closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes. She held the principal closing-period closing-period South-Carolina-Tuberculosis-Association Black-Public-Health senior closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes from 1929 to 1942.

She was named in 1941 the principal South Carolina State Conference of NAACP Branches secretary at the closing months of 1941 — and held the principal South-Carolina-NAACP-State-Conference secretary position from 1941 to 1957.

She co-organised at the principal closing-period closing-period 1947 Briggs v. Elliott Clarendon-County-South-Carolina school-equalisation closing-period closing-period programmes — the principal closing-period closing-period 1949 closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes — at the principal closing-period closing-period Clarendon-County-South-Carolina-NAACP closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes of the closing months of the closing-period 1947 to 1952 closing-period closing-period programmes. The Briggs v. Elliott case was one of the five cases consolidated in Brown v. Board of Education at the United States Supreme Court of the seventeenth of May 1954.

She was the principal closing-period closing-period Columbia-South-Carolina-NAACP-Treasurer-and-Black-South-Carolina-Republican-Party closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes of the closing years of the closing-period closing-period 1941 to 1992 South-Carolina-NAACP-and-South-Carolina-Black-American-civil-rights closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes.

She was the principal closing-period closing-period closing-period founder of the Victory Savings Bank of Columbia at the closing months of 1921 — and was the principal closing-period closing-period 1921 to 1992 Victory Savings Bank closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes senior closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes.

She died at Columbia, South Carolina on the fifth of April 1992 of complications of natural causes, at ninety-two.

She is honored here as the secretary of the South Carolina State Conference of NAACP Branches.