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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Dori Sanders' book Clover has been translated into five different languages and made into a Disney film. The story is set in the countryside of South Carolina, and told through the eyes of a 10-year...
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African Americans, both free and enslaved, served in the American and British armies as armed troops and as laborers known as "pioneers." In many places, slaves were offered freedom if they agreed to...
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In the community of Brattonsville, Martha Bratton sent a message to warn her husband, Colonel William Bratton, that Captain Christian Huck was on his way. Bratton was on the other side of the Catawba...
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As a child, Major General Charles Bolden knew that he wanted to be a pilot. Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Charles grew up in the 1950s, a time when a young African American boy might be...
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There are hundreds of Philip Simmons's gates and fences around Charleston. One of his gates hangs in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He has won national awards and was commissioned to...
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At the age of 12, Philip became an apprentice to a blacksmith. It was a hard job. Apprentices swept floors, shoed horses and worked simple pieces of iron while laboring around a hot forge. Only after...
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When Philip Simmons was a child, he liked to draw the wrought iron gates around Charleston, South Carolina. The spirals and loops he saw in the ironwork inspired his artistic abilities. Philip would...
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In the 1950s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became known as the leader of the civil rights movement. More than 20 years before Dr. King, Modjeska Simkins began her own work for the civil rights of...
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Mary continued to open more schools, created a hospital and promoted voting rights for African Americans. President Franklin D. Roosevelt invited her to become an advisor in 1936. Her job required her...
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In 1904, Mary McLeod Bethune began a school for poor African American children in Daytona, Florida. With only $1.50 to start the school, she had to be very creative. The desks were made from packing...
