Thinking in Place

This week we are offering resources for understanding South Carolina's history of slavery, segregation, and oppression. The exhibits and documentaries featured below were supported by the SC Humanities grants program.

Dr. Ramon Jackson , African American Heritage Coordinator for the SC Department of Archives and History , joins us for this week's Book Drop.

South Carolina's Reconstruction: Restoration, Revolution, Reaction

From the Black Codes of 1865, which sought to deny African Americans any of the tangible benefits of citizenship, to the Constitution of 1868, which was drafted by a majority Black delegation, to the Constitution of 1895, which stripped Black men of their right to vote, this SC Department of Archives and History exhibit explores both the fleeting experiment in biracial democracy during Reconstruction and the unfulfilled promise of that vision for American Society.

Somebody Had To Do It: First Children in School Desegregation

The Somebody Had To Do It initiative was launched in 2006 as a collaborative, multi-institutional project to identify and collect oral histories from individuals who were the first Black students to integrate all-White schools during the twentieth-century civil rights movement. Somebody Had To Do It examines the history of school desegregation in South Carolina and the U.S. South. This online exhibition features oral histories with Black Americans who were the “first children” to integrate public schools in the mid-twentieth century.

Jail, No Bail

Jail, No Bail tells the story of the “Friendship Nine,” a group of college students from Rock Hill, SC who staged a nonviolent protest against the segregationist practice of not serving African-Americans at a local five-and-dime lunch counter on January 31, 1961. The Friendship Nine were arrested after the protest at McCrory’s lunch counter on Main Street in Rock Hill, and they resolutely refused bail, choosing the 30 days of hard labor at the York County Prison Farm over the $100 fine. This decision of “jail over bail” was a first in the Civil Rights movement and became a strategy that was widely emulated across the country.

African Passages, Lowcountry Adaptations

African Passages, Lowcountry Adaptations (APLA) is an online exhibition series about the systems of chattel slavery and plantation agriculture that developed in the Atlantic World, and that would come to define race, class, and labor experiences in Charleston and the surrounding South Carolina Lowcountry region from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. After Emancipation, legacies of race and class inequalities that stemmed from slavery continue to be a struggle into the present.

Two exhibitions are included in this online exhibition series: Atlantic World Context and Establishing Slavery in the Carolina Lowcountry.

Image : Family of African Americans on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina, ca. 1862, courtesy of the Library of Congress and learnnc.org.

Digital Humanities Resources

Digital Humanities Directory

Book Drop with Ramon Jackson

Chad Williams, Kidada E. Williams, and Keisha Blain, eds., Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2016).

Orville Burton and Winfred B. Moore, Jr., Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina during the Twentieth Century (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008).

Dr. Ramon Jackson , African American Heritage Coordinator for the SC Department of Archives and History , joins us this week to offer two book recommendations: Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence and Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina during the Twentieth Century.

These edited volumes provide an excellent starting point for those interested in studying or teaching about South Carolina's lengthy history and ongoing struggle with racial capitalism within a national context. The first title, edited by three professors who started the #CharlestonSyllabus hashtag following the 2015 Charleston Massacre, is a collection of essays and articles that connect this heinous act of racial violence to America's history of slavery, segregation, and racial oppression. It also includes the original #CharlestonSyllabus, a powerful bibliography compiled from recommendations made by scholars and citizens via social media during the aftermath of the murders.

The second volume originated shortly after a landmark civil rights conference held at The Citadel in 2007. It brings together the voices of leading historians, archivists, and movement veterans to break the silence regarding the civil rights movement and encourages readers to challenge the consensus claim that South Carolina had a more peaceful transition to desegregation because it did not experience as many nationally known incidents of racial violence than its southern neighbors. The volume also includes a section of retrospectives that offers testimonies from local and nationally recognized participants including Charles McDew, Constance Curry, Matthew J. Perry, Harvey Gantt, and Cleveland Sellers. Lastly, the book features numerous photographs taken by famed civil rights photographer and Orangeburg native Cecil Williams, some published for the first time.

Communal

2019 – Oil on Canvas 36” x 48”

Courtesy of Carl and Pat Miller Collection

Artist’s Reflections

Black Carolinians Speak: Portraits of a Pandemic

The South Carolina African American Heritage Commission has launched a new initiative to gather first person testimonies, letters, music, images, art and other documents that capture the experiences of African Americans in South Carolina during the global pandemic of 2020.

What effect has this pandemic had on your personal life, family, business, church, organization or community? What feelings are you experiencing? How have these changes affected your political or economic outlook? How have you or others in your community showed resourcefulness or learned new skills as you have adjusted to the crisis? What advice would you give to others who may face similar crises?

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