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.
Photo
Gloria (Rackley) Blackwell and her daughter Luma. Gloria and her daughter walk beside Whittaker Elementary School where Mrs. Blackwell was a teacher before she was dismissed for her participation in...
Photo
In 1920, Mayesville native Mary McLeod Bethune founded Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona, Florida. In 1935, Bethune was named as head of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth...
Photo
This building, built in 1901, was occupied by McCrory's Five & Dime from 1937 to 1997. On February 12, 1960, black students from Friendship Jr. College in Rock Hill were denied service at the McCrory...
Photo
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...
Photo
Constructed in 1936, Dennis was the first high school for African Americans in Lee County, including Bishopville and nearby rural areas. In contrast with the much larger Bishopville High School, which...
Photo
The building that housed Summerton High School from circa 1936 to the mid-1960s is located at 12 South Church Street in Summerton. In the middle of the twentieth century, the all-white high school was...
Audio
Enslaved Africans sang songs as they worked to help keep the pace of the task they were doing. A leader called out a verse or yell and others responded. This is the call-and-response singing tradition...
Audio
European slave traders brought Africans to the New World on ships as early as the 1400s. These voyages across the Atlantic Ocean are called the Middle Passage. It was a terrible experience for the...
Audio
Spirituals developed at the same time as work songs on the plantations. Although they were religious songs with a Christian message, spirituals were also heartfelt expressions of the slave experience...
Video
Smith singing at the 1988 Harborwalk Festival in Georgetown, SC. Aired on "Midday 5" program with WCSC-TV in Charleston, South Carolina
