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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Photo courtesy of Cecil Williams. Fred Moore is pictured at the podium in White Hall on the campus of South Carolina State College speaking to his fellow students about civil rights activities in...
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In 1963, seventeen-year old Henri Monteith Treadwell was one of the first three black students - along with Robert Anderson and James Solomon - admitted under federal court action to the University of...
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Governor Robert McNair responded to student demonstrations to desegregate the All-Star Bowling Alley by sending additional law enforcement: National Guardsmen, State Law Enforcement Division (SLED)...
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A civil rights activist McKaine, the NAACP and the all-Black Palmetto Teachers Association attacked the issue of salary inequities for Black educators. The average salary for a White elementary school...
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Joseph McDomick, Jr. was born on May 1, 1938, in St. Francisville, Louisiana. In 1964 Judge McDomick began a thirty-year career with the Penn Center, serving as a field supervisor. Under his...
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John H. McCray, a 1931 graduate of the Avery Institute, grew up in the Lincolnville area of Charleston County. In 1938 he became editor and publisher of The Lighthouse and Informer, which in 1941...
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At age 16, James T. McCain worked to register voters in Sumter in 1921. He continued his civil rights activity while he served as the southeastern region field secretary for Congress of Racial...
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Benjamin Elijah Mays was born in the town of Epworth, southeast of Greenwood, August 1894. A son of former slaves, Mays' childhood played a key role in shaping the man that he would become. His...
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Thurgood Marshall's entire legal career was devoted to pursuing equal justice for all. He argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court and won 29 of those cases, including his most significant, Brown v...
