COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) – A garden outside the Osborne Administration Building on USC’s campus marks the spot where three students made history by integrating the university nearly 63 years ago.
A marker bears three names signifying courage, strength and equality: James Solomon, Henri Monteith Treadwell and Robert Anderson.
Solomon, a mathematics graduate student, recalls life in the early 1960s.
“They were still asking Blacks to ride in the back of the bus,” Solomon said.
On Sept. 11, 1963, Solomon and the two other students were granted admission to USC and walked up the steps of the Osborne Administration Building.
Monteith Treadwell, a biology student, spoke at the garden’s dedication 50 years later.
“This is a celebration, but it’s also a day of education,” Monteith Treadwell said. “The role of the university is to offer the prize of continuing education so that leaders can evolve and take their place and strengthening our institutions and printing significant actions in our memories that lead to excellence.”
The three students are also memorialized in a statue across from the garden, outside the McKissick Museum.
The garden features a poem called “The Irresistible Ones” engraved in granite as a spot to remember the three students who opened the school to all students.
“I think this should be a teaching moment,” Solomon said. “I think should note those things that gave us pride. And we should work to try to correct those things which is still giving us heartaches.”
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