Eight years ago, official resistance to desegregation of the public schools in South Carolina was still firm. Due to the pressure applied by the Federal Courts and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) Office of Civil Rights, more desegregation began to occur gradually during the years after 1966. In January 1970, the Greenville and Darlington County schools were ordered to eliminate their dual school systems in midyear. HEW made it clear to South Carolina school officials that freedom of choice was no longer acceptable in those districts where they had clearly failed to eliminate segregation. At present there are 57 school districts which are operating under voluntary desegregation plans and 36 under Federal court order. A host of these court order districts are operating under obsolete, unlawful desegregation plans. The movement for "structural desegregation" of the schools in South Carolina is over. While the system of dual schools has been substantially eliminated, the same energy has not been devoted to eliminate the barriers which still block the road to a quality education for black and poor children. These barriers assume the form of the continuing costs of desegregation and new inequities unforeseen and unanticipated five to ten years ago. (Author/JM)