This monument illustrates the story of African Americans in South Carolina from their arrival during the slave trade to the modern age. Among the 12 scenes carved into the monument are images of a family on the auction block, men and women celebrating the Emancipation...
Providence Baptist Church was established by enslaved and free people of African descent in the town of Hamburg. After the Civil War, Hamburg became a center of African American political power in Aiken County. In 1868 three members of the Providence Congregation --...
S.C. State University was founded in 1896 as the Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural & Mechanical College of S.C., with its origins in the Morrill Land Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 providing for land-grant colleges. Intended "for the best education of the...
After the Civil War, this building became a school for African American children, but from 1895 to 1939 it was the home of Jenkins Orphanage. The orphanage was established by Rev. Daniel J. Jenkins for African American children who were orphans or who had poor or...
This two-story brick house was built in 1907 as a residence for the president of Harbison College. The college began in 1898 as Harbison College for Colored Youth, an outgrowth of Ferguson Academy, an African American school established in the 1880s. The school was a...
This African American church, the first in what is now Cherokee County, was most likely built between 1880 and 1890. It served the Whig Hill, Asbury and Thicketty communities of what was Union County before Cherokee County was created in 1897. Jack Littlejohn donated...
This church was founded in 1866 by Rev. James Smalls who was its pastor for many years. The congregation, which built the sanctuary here on land owned by the Gospel Harp Society, grew to more than 100 members by 1903. In 1914 church trustees purchased this property...
Organized about 1865, this congregation held its early services in a nearby brush arbor and built a permanent sanctuary here soon afterwards. The original building was torn down in 1918 and the lumber used to construct the new one, which still stands. Church member I....
McLeod Plantation includes a plantation house and one of the most intact rows of slave houses in the state. In 1860, 74 slaves lived in 26 cabins on the cotton plantation. Five of these wood frame slave cabins remain today. During the Civil War the plantation served...
This slave house is believed to have been built about the same time as the main house at Magnolia, an imposing Greek Revival mansion constructed c. 1855 for Frances Tucker Hopkins. She was the wealthy widow of David Thomas Hopkins, a prominent Richland County planter....
On May 8, 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Kingstree, where he urged an audience of 5,000 who had gathered on the grounds of Tomlinson High School to “march on ballot boxes” and use the vote as a means to pursue social and economic justice. King also called...
Established in 1871, this is the oldest community in what is now the city of North Charleston. In 1864, Paul and Harriet Trescot, free persons of color living in Charleston, owned 112 acres here. They sold land to Ishmael Grant, Aaron Middleton, and Plenty and William...
Kumler Hall is the last remaining building of Brainerd Institute. Brainerd was established after the Civil War to educate Freedmen by the Board of Missions, Freedmen’s Division, of the Presbyterian Church. The Board of Missions continued to operate the school until it...
In 1838 First Presbyterian Church of Columbia organized their African American members into a separate but affiliated congregation. In 1874 the Ladson members severed ties with First Presbyterian Church and joined the northern Presbyterian denomination. In 1876 the...