A few months before the beginning of this project, our class read an article about the George Stinney case as part of an assignment. The response to it was visceral. Once we knew what was going on, we had to get involved. This website is the result of that need.

 

The Scholars Academy of Ridge View High School is a magnet program that focuses on the humanities. It requires multiple rigorous honors and AP courses, research courses, and a senior Capstone project where the student chooses an issue and creates a 20 page paper discussing it. The program drives its students to understand the dynamics of our world through a lens of human ecology.

 

Our Research 1 class for sophomores is dedicated to teaching us about qualitative research, which will help immensely once we start working towards our capstone project. One of the main focuses of this class is getting into detail with major issues going on in our generation.

 

The short-term impact that we hope this project will have on our community will be the rightful correction of an error in the justice system which resulted in an innocent boy’s death. It is too late to save George Stinney. How he is remembered, though, can still be changed, so that future generations do not wrongly view him as a murderer. The decision in the current hearing could draw attention to yet another example of the high costs of the pervasive racial prejudice in the southern states decades after the 14th Amendment technically made such atrocities illegal. It may also lead to the reexamination of other, similar trials, giving the generations after us a more comprehensive, accurate notion of life in 1940s South Carolina (and in surrounding states and time periods), as well as a more acute awareness that our justice system is controlled by people, with all their biases and agendas, not infallible ideals. In addition, it will hopefully give Stinney’s surviving family members some peace of mind.

 

This undertaking also has a more personal impact on our class. Over the course of this project, we have improved our abilities to gather information, divide up work in an effective manner, and spread awareness via the Internet. Most importantly, we are learning how to make change happen. We now have significantly more experience in fighting for a cause than we did before. We know what such an undertaking entails, and are more prepared to achieve our goals. Our magnet program is primarily dedicated to examining the world around us, especially how information is presented and how that presentation is affected by and affects our culture, but it is also dedicated to actively working to change that world for the better. This website is an example of our efforts to improve our society.