The congregation first met in the home of Mack and Caroline Saxon, freed slaves who had acquired substantial land holdings in Laurens County by 1877. The congregation later expanded and moved to a brush arbor before constructing a wood frame building on a three-acre...
Isom Caleb Clinton (1830-1904), a former slave, helped establish Mt. Carmel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and its campground (c. 1870). The campground was the site of meetings held every September. The church is located on the southern side of the...
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...
The congregation of this church was organized in the early 20th century, c. 1908. It was an offshoot of the Weston Chapel AME Church, the mother church of the Greenwood District. The brick church features Gothic details including the stained glass windows with Gothic...
This building, listed as a contributing property in the Orangeburg Downtown Historic District, housed the offices of Earl W. Coblyn and Zack E. Townsend. Coblyn and Townsend were African American lawyers who represented the plaintiffs in the Adams v. School District...
A former slave from Virginia, Simon Brown lived in Society Hill around 1900 and for years was employed by Lawrence Faulkner´s widow to work on her farm. His small house was adjacent to the Faulkner house on this site. A gifted story-teller of black folk tales,...
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...
This school, built in 1953, was one of many schools built by the equalization program of Gov. James F. Byrnes, intended to preserve school segregation by building new schools for black students. It was named for Nellie Burke Levister (1884-1968), the first Jeanes...
Liberty Colored High School was erected in 1937 with assistance from the Works Progress Administration. The brick building with large well-lighted classrooms and an auditorium replaced an earlier frame building that had burned. By the 1940s, Liberty Colored High...
In 1867 Thomas and Margaret Briggs gave four acres of land to this congregation. The present building was completed in 1905 and was later veneered in brick. Meetings held here in the 1940s and 1950s led to local court cases that helped bring about the U.S. Supreme...
Lincoln High School was established in the 1930s as the high school for African American students in the city of Sumter. The building occupies the former site of a schoolhouse for African American students dating from 1874, referred to as “Lincoln School.” The core...
This Rosenwald school opened in 1928 and was the first for black students in Loris and other nearby communities. When the school closed in 1955 its students were transferred to the Finklea Consolidated High School, where George C. Cooper (1915-1991) served as...
Lowman Hall, which was constructed in 1917 as a men’s dormitory, is the oldest intact building on the campus of South Carolina State University. It is associated with the development of the college from the insubstantial frame buildings when it opened in 1896 to the...
The first African American Baptist church in Barnwell County was founded in 1866 when Rev. James T. Tolbert preached in Blackville under a brush arbor, the first sanctuary was built in 1868. The church hosted the first state convention of black Baptists, held here in...