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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Sharon Murray talks about her role in teaching the Gullah culture and language at the Boone Hall Plantation. She also shares the history of the Gullah.
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Gullah communities are located where enslaved Africans once lived and worked on Sea Island plantations that were owned by American colonists. Native Americans were also part of these communities. The...
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From West Africa During the late 1600s, English settlers in the new colonies needed more workers to farm thousands of acres of land on Sea Island plantations. Although some of the workers were Native...
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This is the story of an African American girl born to a half-white, half-black brick mason who came from relative wealth and married into wealth, but she dedicated her life to helping the...
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Paul then leaves to check on some trucks at one of his plantations. There he visits two slaves, Tricia and John Judah, who describe for him the functional operation of the Trunk System. This was...
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Few vernacular art forms have made as impressive a mark on American culture as the Blues. From the expressive experiences of African-American life, skilled musicians fashioned a distinctive idiom that...
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Researcher Dale Rosengarten reads a passage from a Penn School program dating the first year that basketmaking was taught at the school.
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Resident of St. Helena Island, SC (Beaufort County). His father, George Brown, taught basketmaking at the Penn School on St. Helena Island in the early 20th Century. The school was founded in the...
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Students will understand how enslaved Africans created music for their worship experience. Religious meetings in “praise houses” provided the spiritual outlet for enslaved Africans on the plantation...
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Students will understand that music and material culture became a mode of covert communication between slaves. Aunt Pearlie Sue is our guide as students uncover hidden messages in the work songs...
