Lesson
Grades
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The Negro Travelers’ Green Book began publication in 1936. The book offered “Assured Protection for the Negro Traveler”. The publisher-owner Victor Green began the idea from personal experiences while...
Briggs v. Elliott
African American History
Learn about the achievements of African Americans who have shaped South Carolina and American history.
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.
Within this Collection
Friendship Nine
The Friendship Nine consisted of a group of nine African American young men who were sent to jail after staging a sit-in at a segregated McCrory's lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina in 1961.
Photo
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Episode
18
This one-room school on Coosaw Island was taught by a Penn School graduate in the 1920s. A Penn School faculty member wrote a note on the back of the photograph, "It is to such conditions that our...
Photo
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Episode
6
Booker T. Washington High School, Class of 1933, seated on the lawn in front of the main entrance to the school. Founded in 1916, the school was, until its closing in 1974, the hub of the separate...
Photo
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Episode
3
The original building of the Penn School photographed around 1890. The Penn School, located on St. Helena's Island, was the first school for freed African-Americans opened by northerners in the South...
Photo
Grades
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Episode
16
During slavery, although plantation owners attempted to control the lives and activities of their slave labor, a vital community based on African traditions of family and kin networks aided African...
Photo
Episode
15
The Works Progress Administration photographer who recorded this structure in the 1930s called it a "Critter Barn." Its design and execution clearly mark the African building influence upon it, even a...
Photo
Grades
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Episode
14
African herbal medicine traditions remained an important part of health care practices in the slave communities. Even after the war, when the Freedman's Bureau and northern educators tried to teach...
Photo
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Episode
12
Alfred Hutty painting of a Lowcountry group of singers. These men and women are quite likely the musicians for a "shout" ceremony, for they are singing and clapping their hands rhythmically. The...
Photo
Grades
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Episode
11
The crafts that Africans brought with them in their heads and hands to the new world were crafts that were important to carrying out everyday life--whether it be making baskets and pots, or keeping...
Photo
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Episode
10
A remarkable African slave craftsman in the Edgefield area, known only as "Dave," produced this pot, whose design is distinctly African in form. Courtesy of the South Carolina State Museum.
Photo
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Episode
8
A group of Penn School baskets, illustrating their many forms, as well as the beauty that made them an important craft that Sea Island residents could sell as the tourist industry began to expand in...
Photo
Grades
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Episode
7
The first basket teacher at the Penn School worked to revive and perpetuate the African basket making skills among the children of the Sea Islands. The baskets made had a wide range of utilitarian...
Photo
Episode
6
This grave of an African American is near St. Andrews in Richland County. The African custom of decorating a grave with items that their former owner might need in the spirit world was widespread in...
Photo
Episode
5
West African religious traditions varied widely, ranging from Islam, to various tribal faiths, to some Christianity. The different tribal faiths had a number of common patterns. These included a...
Photo
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Episode
4
The music slaves brought with them from Africa came from a variety of different cultures, and it is impossible in the caption for a single image to recount the history of the blending of those...
Photo
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Episode
3
An unknown man, Charleston County, playing the fiddle, around 1900. By rights this photograph should be of a banjo, whose origins are indisputably African. As early as the late 17th century, records...
Photo
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Episode
2
A 1930 photograph of a group of African American laborers cultivating with hoes. Hoe culture was the predominant method of working the soil in traditional African agricultural societies, and the hoe...
Photo
Grades
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Episode
1
"Head-toting" of bundles is a distinctly African method of transporting bulky materials, whether it be firewood for the home, cotton from the fields, or produce carried to market. Courtesy of the...
Video
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Allison Creek Presbyterian Church Pastor, Sam McGregor, explains, “It’s the greatest story of African American liberation that’s never been told…that centered around the life of Elias Hill, who was a...
Photo
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Episode
3
This engraving, also from the 1785 Henry Mouzon map cartouche shows all the main steps in the production of indigo. The plants were harvested in bundles before the stems became woody, then immediately...
Photo
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Episode
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Workers in the fields harvest the indigo plant during the hot summer months. Engraving from a French book, around 1760. Indigo was a good complement to rice as a crop. Indigo grew well in the high...
Photo
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Episode
12
African-American workers thresh rice with a flail around 1910, a technique that is probably African in its origins. Lowcountry planters in colonial South Carolina sought out slaves from the Rice Coast...
Photo
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Episode
11
An Alice Huger Ravenel Smith watercolor of African-American workers loading rice on a ship to send to market. Note the use of "head-toting" as a way of moving the heavy rice sacks. Courtesy of the...
Photo
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Episode
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Winnowing rice with a fanner basket near Beaufort, in 1907. The sweet grass baskets now sold as decorative items in Charleston area open air markets were originally essential pieces of home and field...
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