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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Scott’s Branch High School (1951-1994) is a building with national significance due to its association with the United States Supreme Court case, Briggs v. Elliott , part of the Brown v. Board of...
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"The Florence C. Benson Elementary School was built in 1953-55 as Wheeler Hill School to serve African American students of the community and as a replacement for the overcrowded Celia Dial Saxon...
Interactive
From 1915-1974, Booker T. Washington High School served as a separate educational system for young African-Americans in Columbia, South Carolina. The school began with elementary grades and became a...
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Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter Discusses her Role in the Removal of the Confederate Flag Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter has served in the South Carolina State House of Representatives since 1992...
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Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter Discusses Getting into Politics Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter has served in the South Carolina State House of Representatives since 1992. She is the first African...
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This photo gallery of the Modjeska Monteith Simkins House contains the following shots: Portraits of Modjeska Monteith Simkins. Inside the exhibit “An Advocate of the People” inside the home. A wall...
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Mahkia Green, a Columbia based filmmaker shows parallels between the protesters of the past, with those fighting for social justice today in her film, "Rise Up."
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Modjeska Simkins discusses the lack of basic amenities, and financial problems of the three room school house where her mother and sister worked.
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Built between 1890 and 1895, this one-story cottage was home to Modjeska Monteith Simkins, considered "the Matriarch of Civil Rights activists of South Carolina," from 1932 until her death on April 5...
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By reading picture book biographies, students will become familiar with the challenges that early African-Americans faced, but also how they triumphed in spite of these challenges. Also, other stories...
