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 "Challenger" astronaut Ron McNair (1951-1986) and Governor Richard Riley during a joint session of the South Carolina legislature in the House Chambers on April 11, 1984. McNair, an Air Force...
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Benjamin E. Mays (1894-1984) was born in Greenwood County, the son of former slaves, and educated at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and the University of Chicago, where he received his M.A. and Ph...
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Brookgreen's story begins more than 250 years ago when Europeans saw the potential for growing rice here and the backbreaking labor of enslaved Africans carved rice fields out of the swamps...
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Cornell A. (C.A.) Johnson, at left, is presented with gifts by Fairwold Elementary School Principal Norman Pendergrass, right, in a "This is Your Life" ceremony in 1952 honoring Johnson for his role...
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Produced by Darren K. Woodland Jr., 2017 Knowitall.org Spring Semester Intern Dr. Ernest E. Just was born in Charleston, S.C. in 1883. He was an African American biologist, teacher, and scholar who...
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John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (1917- ), a native of Cheraw, began playing the trombone and the trumpet in 1929. He studied harmony and music theory at Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina before...
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Dr. Matilda A. Evans (1870s-1935) received an M.D. degree from Oberlin College in 1897, the only African-American in her class. She was a native of Aiken, and a student at Schofield Normal School...
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Many returning to Florence after World War II saw clearly, possibly for the first time, a great injustice in their own community...segregation. Brown versus Board of Education" changed race relations...
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REENACTMENT: The lesson focuses on a mission in which Robert Smalls was sent to convince President Lincoln to arm Negro troops in the South Carolina Lowcountry to fight for the Union. This is done in...
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Septima Poinsett Clark (1898-1987) was a pioneering African-American teacher in the Lowcountry. A graduate of Avery Institute (see The Avery Institute In Charleston), Mrs. Clark taught at a two...
