Chester native Dr. Cyril O. Spann, a graduate of Benedict and Meharry Medical Colleges, was a Black physician and surgeon who operated a medical practice out of this building while also employed at the nearby Good Samaritan-Waverly Hospital. Dr. Spann served as the...
White Methodists built Campbell Chapel AME Church in 1853. Nine African American freedmen, who were likely once enslaved by members of the white congregation, purchased the 19th-century Greek Revival structure in 1874. Members of the new African Methodist Episcopal...
Built in the late 1830s, Faber House is an Early Classical Revival mansion located in Charleston's historic Hampstead Village neighborhood. Although some local structures incorporated aspects of Palladian style, the Faber House showcases the purity of this form with...
This church was founded in 1854 by residents of the Clay Hill community on Allison Creek, who were members of Bethel (1769) and Ebenezer (c. 1785) Presbyterian churches. They built this church soon afterwards, on land donated by J.D. Currence. Rev. J.R. Baird, the...
A contributing property in the Orangeburg Downtown Historic District, the lunch counter in this drugstore, along with that of the Kress Department Store, was the scene of sit-ins and protests in 1960.
Community leaders met at this church to plan how to proceed with the Pearson v. Clarendon County Board of Education lawsuit in 1947. At the time, the district provided thirty school buses for white children but none for blacks. African American children often walked...
Rev. DeLaine and other petitioners met at this church regularly after Thurgood Marshall made a commitment to represent them in the Briggs vs. Elliott lawsuit. The church was originally established in 1860 as a brush arbor. Today's building is a small white siding...
Sgt. Isaac Woodard, a black soldier, was removed from a bus in Batesburg and arrested on Feb. 12, 1946, after a dispute with the bus driver. Woodard was beaten and blinded by a town police officer, charged, and convicted for being “drunk and disorderly.” The incident...
Charleston was one of the largest slave trading cities in the United States. In the 1800s, the area around the Old Exchange Building was one of the most common sites of downtown slave auctions. Along with real estate and other personal property, thousands of enslaved...
Before the Civil War, South Carolina relied on a plantation economy and enslaved Africans outnumbered white residents. Dehumanized, brutalized, and treated as property, black people resisted in ways small and large to survive. After the Confederacy's defeat, the 13th,...
Levi Pearson initiated the fight for equal education by petitioning Clarendon School District 26 to provide bus transportation for African American children in 1947. When the school district refused, he filed suit. Pearson filed the suit on the behalf of his...
Annie Gibson was one the people who signed the petition that became the Briggs v. Elliott lawsuit. Like many others, she lost her job as a maid at a local motel because of her involvement in civil rights activities. She was willing to risk her livelihood to fight for...
Originally formed as the Taw Caw School of Taw Caw Baptist Church, Scott's Branch High School served African American students in Summerton. The first building was located beside St. Mark AME Church in front of a brook called Scott's Branch and changed the name from...
Railroad Avenue was the site of a thriving Black business district in downtown Summerton during segregation. Owners of several businesses, including Stella's Cafe and Oliver's Cafe, were among those who signed the original petition that resulted in the Briggs vs....