Clarendon County black and white schools. The Clarendon County case was eventually reworked to become one of several individual cases set up to directly challenge the "separate but equal" doctrine in the Supreme Court of the United States case of Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka in 1954. Because her activism was at times controversial, her life and home became targets of violence. An unknown person shot at her house during the time she was active with the NAACP. In the late 1950s, many began to accuse Simkins of being a communist. Some of her friends were members of the American Communist Party, and she was accused of subversive activities by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Furthermore, accusations against civil rights activists for being communists intensified after the Brown decision was passed down. In 1957, Simkins was not nominated as a candidate for secretary by the Nominations Committee of the South Carolina NAACP. It was the first time in sixteen years that she did not get nominated. Some NAACP officials have suggested that her associations with communists and supposedly subversive groups were the cause of this. She remained active for many years in the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), a southwide interracial civil rights organization, working with James Dombrowski and Carl and Anne Braden. Simkins was able to serve in leadership positions that were traditionally unavailable to women in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1981, she was honored by a coalition of civil rights groups, who established an endowment in her name to provide income for activists working for the causes of the underprivileged. Hundreds of people attended a memorial service following her death on April 5, 1992, and Judge Matthew J. Perry stated: She probably will be remembered as a woman who challenged everyone. She challenged the white political leadership of the state to do what was fair and equitable among all people and she challenged black citizens to stand up and demand their rightful place in the state and the nation. Death and legacy Simkins died in Columbia, South Carolina on April 5, 1992, and was interred at the Palmetto Cemetery in Columbia. Her portrait hangs in the South Carolina State House. References Bibliography Woods, Barbara A. "Modjeska Simkins and the South Carolina Conference of the NAACP, 1939-1957." Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers 1941-1965. Ed. Vicki L.