Judge who first wrote separate is not equal lauded

— A little-known chapter of American history written in South Carolina is being commemorated.

A statue of U.S. District Judge Waites Waring is being dedicated Friday at Charleston's federal courthouse. Waring, the son of a Confederate soldier, was the first judge in the nation to write an opinion that segregated schools are not equal schools since separate but equal became the law of the land.

His dissent in a case from Clarendon County in 1951 would be echoed by the U.S. Supreme Court in its later landmark decision outlawing segregation in the nation's public schools.

Waring's rulings in cases including opening the state's Democratic Primary to blacks made him a pariah in his own town. A cross was burned in his yard, and he received death threats.

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