Black History Month is celebrated every February to honor the achievements of African Americans who have shaped American history. Historian Carter G. Woodson hoped to raise awareness of African American's contributions to civilization by establishing Negro History Week. The event was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that included both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass' birthdays. The week was later expanded to a month in 1976 during the United States bicentennial.
PHOTO: On March 20, 1969, Black hospital workers at the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston went on strike to protest the firing of twelve employees and to call for higher wages and union recognition.
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Dr. Stern goes into the South’s reaction to the Witherspoon Murder, and how people in the South were cautious regarding the threat of slave rebellions. She then analyzes Mary Chesnut’s use of the...
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With this final segment on Mary Chesnut’s diary, Dr. Stern talks about Mary Chesnut’s take on emancipation, and how it turned Southern societal norms upside down.
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Julia Stern, professor of English and American Studies at Northwestern University and author of Mary Chesnut's Civil War Epic, will "unpack the way in which at levels domestic, historical and epic...
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A cotton field during harvesting in Aiken. Courtesy of the Aiken County Historical Museum.
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Woodcut by Anna Heyward Taylor of a boll weevil. As early as 1728, a cotton weevil was reported in North Carolina, but the pest now known by the name of "boll weevil" did not become a major threat to...
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Ripened bolls of short-staple cotton in the fields of Calhoun County in September of 1968. Cotton still produced in South Carolina dominated agriculture in the state in the first half of the 19th...
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“V” is for Vesta Mills of Charleston. In 1899, Spartanburg textile manufacturer John Montgomery and New York merchant Seth Milliken purchased the Charleston Cotton Mills and renamed it Vesta Mills...
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“A” is for Atlantic Beach. [Horry County; population 351]. A historically black beach community, Atlantic Beach is located fifteen miles north of Myrtle Beach. Atlantic Beach flourished during the...
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"M" is for McCray, Carrie Allen [1913-2009] Poet. Author.
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"L" is for Littlejohn, Nina [1879-1963] Hospital Administrator.
