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.
Photo
The congressional redistricting in 1981 led to the election of I. DeQuincey Newman as the first African-American South Carolina senator since the end of Reconstruction. Here, he greets some of his new...
Photo
The power and right of African-Americans to vote, guaranteed by the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, has been a major driving force behind many of the economic, political, and educational gains made...
Photo
African-American protestors of segregation picket restaurants and stores on Main Street in Columbia, sometime around 1960, proclaiming "Together We Stand, Divided We Fall." Courtesy of the South...
Photo
Henri Monteith Treadwell (age 17), James Solomon (age 33) and Robert Anderson (age 19), speaking to news media after registering in September 1963 as the first African-American students at the...
Photo
The first integration of public higher education in South Carolina came at Clemson University. The student who successfully sued for admission with the help of his NAACP attorney, Matthew Perry (left)...
Photo
The Emancipation Proclamation has often been misunderstood, even by those who admire it. Abraham Lincoln disliked the system of slavery, but he made it clear from the beginning that the war effort was...
Photo
A raid of the Second South Carolina Volunteers among the rice plantations along the Combahee. Published in the July 4, 1863, issue of "Harper's Weekly." Courtesy of the Pratt Memorial Library.
Photo
Forfeited estate plat from Port Royal Island. The surveyor reported, "This tract subject to Mrs. Poingsett's Right of Dower during her life." The plat--an official map made by a surveyor that gave the...
Photo
The occupation of the Beaufort area enabled many slaves to flee their masters. In the chaos of war and occupation, many brought with them household goods, furniture, and clothing from the homes their...
Video
A group of Columbia businessmen met one afternoon, raised the money, bought the acreage, and made a gift to the federal government of the land on which the camp was to be built. On June 2, 1917, Camp...
