This church, founded in 1865, grew out of an antebellum praise house for black members of the Baptist Church of Beaufort. During the Civil War, after the Federal occupation of the town, it hosted a school for Freedmen. Rev. Arthur Waddell (1821-1895), organized the...
Wade Alston Ford, an African American architect from Lake View, South Carolina, designed and oversaw construction of this Late Gothic Revival church. Five volunteer craftsmen built the cruciform church between 1922 and 1926. This is the second building to house the...
This church was founded in 1867 on land donated by Moses and Matilda Watson. It was the first African American church in the Bloomingvale community and was organized by trustees Orange Bruorton, Augusta Dicker, Sr., Fred Grant, Esau Green, Fortune Session, Moses...
Wesley Methodist Church is the oldest African American Methodist congregation in Columbia. It was founded in 1869 by Rev. J.C. Emerson and was a separate black congregation instead of forming from an established white church. First called the Columbia Mission, it met...
Today a private residence, this building was once a store owned and operated by local merchant, educator, politician, and lay church leader Zachariah Wines (1847-1920). Wines was a founding member and officer of Union Baptist Church (organized in 1866) across the...
Zion Baptist Church first organized in 1865 and met in a humble dwelling on Gadsden St. The congregation moved to this site in 1871. The current sanctuary, the second on this spot, was built in 1916. In 1930 Dr. Matilda Evans, the first African American woman to have...
This African American church was organized c. 1865 when four men left Sandy Level Baptist Church, founded before the Revolution with both white and black members, to form their own congregation. They elected Rev. Joe Taylor as their first pastor and held early...
Opened in 2011, the Ronald E. McNair Life History Center is a museum that pays tribute to the life of Dr. McNair, a Lake City-born astronaut and physicist who died in the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle explosion. Through moving photography and artifacts, the museum...
Founded by freedmen after the Civil War, Bethel AME Church relocated to Sumter Street in 1921. John Anderson Lankford, one of the first registered Black architects in the United States, designed the Romanesque Revival brick structure. Bethel boasted one of the...
This historic marker narrates the story of William Hill, who served in the American Revolution. Hill built an ironworks near here on Allison Creek about 1776. Hill and his partner, Isaac Hayne, manufactured swivel guns, kitchen utensils, cannon, ammunition, and...
This house, built in 1930, is typical in materials and methods of construction of those built on the sea islands from the end of the Civil War to the mid-20th century. It was built on land bought by William Simmons (c. 1835-1922), who was born a slave and served in...
This church was founded in 1873 with Rev. Dave Christie as its first pastor. In 1877 trustees Emily A. Williams, Richard Howard, and Irwin Mintz purchased a small lot here, on what was then Market Street. They soon built a frame church, which stood for almost 30...
Wilson School was the first public school for children of any race in Florence. Opened on this site by the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866, it was incorporated two years later into South Carolina’s first system of free public education. In 1906 the original wooden building...
This hospital, first known as St. Luke Colored Hospital, was a two-story frame building. Founded in 1920, it served patients for 28 years. A registered nurse and a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute, Mrs. M.H. Bright was the hospital's first superintendent. Marker...