Joseph DeLaine

Biography

Joseph Armstrong "J. A." De Laine (July 2, 1898 – August 3, 1974) was an African Methodist Episcopal Church minister and civil rights leader from Clarendon County, South Carolina. He received a B.A. from Allen University in 1931, working as a laborer and running a dry-cleaning business to pay for his education. De Laine worked with Modjeska Simkins and the South Carolina NAACP on the case Briggs v. Elliott, which challenged segregation in Summerton, South Carolina. The case was consolidated into the U.S. Supreme Court decision usually cited as Brown v. Board of Education. In the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, De Laine and his family came under pressure to leave Lake City. Things finally came to a head on the night of October 10, 1955, when several men in a car shot at the St. James A.M.E. Church parsonage, which De Laine and his family called home.

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