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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The original building of the Penn School photographed around 1890. The Penn School, located on St. Helena's Island, was the first school for freed African-Americans opened by northerners in the South...
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During slavery, although plantation owners attempted to control the lives and activities of their slave labor, a vital community based on African traditions of family and kin networks aided African...
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The Works Progress Administration photographer who recorded this structure in the 1930s called it a "Critter Barn." Its design and execution clearly mark the African building influence upon it, even a...
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African herbal medicine traditions remained an important part of health care practices in the slave communities. Even after the war, when the Freedman's Bureau and northern educators tried to teach...
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Alfred Hutty painting of a Lowcountry group of singers. These men and women are quite likely the musicians for a "shout" ceremony, for they are singing and clapping their hands rhythmically. The...
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The crafts that Africans brought with them in their heads and hands to the new world were crafts that were important to carrying out everyday life--whether it be making baskets and pots, or keeping...
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A remarkable African slave craftsman in the Edgefield area, known only as "Dave," produced this pot, whose design is distinctly African in form. Courtesy of the South Carolina State Museum.
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A group of Penn School baskets, illustrating their many forms, as well as the beauty that made them an important craft that Sea Island residents could sell as the tourist industry began to expand in...
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The first basket teacher at the Penn School worked to revive and perpetuate the African basket making skills among the children of the Sea Islands. The baskets made had a wide range of utilitarian...
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This grave of an African American is near St. Andrews in Richland County. The African custom of decorating a grave with items that their former owner might need in the spirit world was widespread in...
