Orangeburg County - South Carolina State University

South Carolina State University was founded in 1896 as the Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural, & Mechanical College of S.C., with its origins in the Morrill Land Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890, providing for land-grant colleges.

Intended "for the best education of the hand, head and heart of South Carolina's young manhood and womanhood of the Negro race," it became South Carolina State College in 1954 and South Carolina State University in 1992.

South Carolina State has been called "at least symbolically, the most important educational institution in black Carolina since its founding."

Students were active during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, taking part in sit-ins, the Orangeburg Movement of 1963-64, seeking desegregation of downtown businesses, and the Orangeburg Massacre in 1968.

Standards

• 8-7 The student will demonstrate an understanding of the impact on South Carolina of significant events of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
  • Changes that took place in the United States during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries revitalized the economy and challenged traditional society and politics in South Carolina. To understand the response of South Carolina to these ch...
    • 8-7.2 Analyze the movement for civil rights in South Carolina, including the impact of the landmark court cases Elmore v. Rice and Briggs v. Elliot; civil rights leaders Septima Poinsette Clark, Modjeska Monteith Simkins, and Matthew J. Perry; the Sout...