The African presence in South Carolina is closely linked to Transatlantic crossings made by early European explorers and later captured West Africans. From the earliest of times, enslaved Africans had a major impact on the lives of newcomers to the Americas through the backbreaking work to build a lucrative rice-based economy to their major influences on foodways, art, music and culture. Here’s a brief history of African Americans in South Carolina.
According to the International African American Museum, more than 12.5 million African captives were forced into the trans-Atlantic slave trade, most from West and West Central Africa. An estimated 1.8 million died in the two-month, cramped, inhumane crossing, often called the “Middle Passage.”
1526
Africans are thought to have first arrived
in South Carolina as part of a Spanish expedition from the Caribbean.
1670
England’s eight Lords Proprietors settled Charleston as a business venture, soon discovering rice to be a crop that would provide economic stability for the new Carolina colony. They used the free labor of enslaved people from West Africa’s traditional rice-growing region to build the colony.
1708
The number of enslaved Africans and their Gullah Geechee descendants in South Carolina were the majority of the colony’s population, which was about 8,000 people.
1739
About 100 Black insurrectionists seized firearms and tried to fight their way to St. Augustine, Florida, where the Spanish promised them freedom. This was the “Stono Rebellion,” a revolt that was put down with at least 60 executions. The following year, the state legislature passed oppressive “slave codes’’ to curb travel, growing food, possession of money and drum-playing.
1808
A congressional ban on slave imports took effect Jan. 1, 1808, including at Gadsden’s Wharf, which was one of the landing locations for enslaved people arriving in Charleston. The site is where the International African American Museum is now located.
1822
A freedman of African descent, Denmark Vesey, was accused of leading a widespread and well-planned rebellion that was foiled by the White elite. Vesey and 34 others were hanged. The Citadel later was built as a reaction and to increase military control over the Black majority.
1829
The Rev. Daniel Payne, a free Black man, opens a school for free Blacks, but the legislature three years later forced it to close. Payne later became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
1850
The number of enslaved Africans and their descendents in South Carolina is 57.6%
of the state’s population.
1860
South Carolina secedes from the Union. The following year, the Civil War started with shells fired at Fort Sumter in the Charleston Harbor.
1862
Robert Smalls, a Charleston harbor pilot, took control of a Confederate steamer, the Planter, and presented it to the United States Navy. It was converted into a Union ship used throughout the war. Smalls later became a state legislator and congressman.
1863
More than 1,500 free Black Union troops died, were wounded or were captured in the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, which is depicted in the movie Glory. While a defeat for the Union, it spurred more free Black troops to sign up for service and gave the Union Army a numeric advantage.
1865
The nation’s first Memorial Day reportedly was held in Charleston on May 1 at Hampton Park when 10,000 people gathered to honor 257 Union dead.
1868
After U.S. troops registered Black voters in 1867, a new majority-Black General Assembly takes control and adopts a new constitution, which required a system of free public schools.
1869
The Charleston branch of the Freedman’s Bank for freed slaves was established. Four years later, it has 5,500 depositors and assets of almost $350,000.
1876
Civil disturbances by racist forces throughout the state, but particularly in Black majority areas, threatened leadership of Republican Black elected officials and sought to repress the Black vote. Reconstruction spiraled out of control. Fear and intimidation returned to Black communities as violence escalated.
1877
With the federal Compromise of 1877 came the end of the Reconstruction era and return of the White elite to power. In the next few years came a return to repressive poll taxes and literacy tests and intimidation. New Jim Crow laws took away freedoms, keeping African Americans in positions of inferiority.
1879
More than 200 Black emigrants leave Charleston for Liberia, illustrating the desire by many that the U.S. could never be a free homeland for people of African descent. The Rev. Richard Cain, a national AME leader, who served in Congress, sponsored a bill to pay passage.
1891
The Rev. Daniel Jenkins established an orphanage in Charleston that became a key international influencer of jazz music and toured the nation and world in the years to come.
1895
The S.C. Constitution of 1895, which is still in effect today, was passed by White elites to institutionalize segregation and harsh Jim Crow laws to limit freedoms for South Carolina’s Black citizens.
1917
Marked the founding of the Charleston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
1919
The Charleston Race Riots occurred when a group of White sailors stormed King Street looking for a Black man who allegedly didn’t buy them the liquor they wanted. The sailors attacked Black Charlestonians, three of whom were murdered. The killers were arrested and a biracial committee was established to prevent future violence.
1945
Nearly 1,000 workers, most of whom were Black women, at the Charleston Cigar Factory had a work strike to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Striking workers sang “We Will Overcome.” The song was later changed to become the anthem for the modern-day civil rights movement.
1952
U.S. District Judge Waties Waring of Charleston wrote an important dissent in the Briggs v. Elliott school desegregation case that said “segregation is per se inequality.” The decision formed a key argument in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court two years later.
1957
A “citizenship school” opened on Johns Island by activists Esau Jenkins, Septima P. Clark and Bernice Robinson to train Black adults how to register for vote and fill out other forms. Clark later was called “mother of the movement” by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for schools across the Deep South. In 1975, Clark was the first Black woman to be elected to the Charleston school board.
1962
King spoke at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in support of local voter registration and civil rights efforts.
1963
Charleston schools are the first in the state to be forced to comply with the 1954 Brown v. Board desegregation decision. That year, a federal judge in South Carolina cleared the way for 11 Black students to attend and desegregate Rivers High School in Charleston and other schools in the city.
1969
After 12 Black workers were fired from the Medical College Hospital in Charleston, a two-month strike occurred that led to interruption of commerce and marches, one of which had 10,000 protesters. A settlement eventually occurred leading to better pay and working conditions and the creation of the state’s Human Affairs Commission.
1982
The city of Charleston appointed Reuben Greenberg, an African American, to be its
police chief.
1992
Following a mandated congressional redistricting, Sumter native Jim Clyburn of Sumter became the first Black congressman elected in the state since 1893. He represents a district that stretches from Columbia to Charleston to the Pee Dee.
1999
A 6-foot historical marker is placed on Sullivan’s Island near Fort Moultrie to honor enslaved Africans who died on the way to America or arrived in bondage in Charleston Harbor.
2000
Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. publicly proposed that the city tell its full history through a museum that shines a light on long-ignored stories of African American experiences. This was the first step in what became the International African American Museum (IAAM).
2005
Clyburn becomes the inaugural board chair
of the IAAM.
2014
The city of Charleston acquires Gadsden’s Wharf, a 2.3-acre waterfront lot on the Cooper River, to be the IAAM’s home. The same year, the museum’s design team is finalized.
2015
Nine worshippers are murdered at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston by a racist White gunman. The shootings haunted and galvanized the nation, giving impetus to the need for the International African American Museum. President Barack Obama gave a eulogy for one of the victims, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor and a state senator. During the eulogy, Obama led the mourners in singing “Amazing Grace.”
2017
The IAAM’s building design receives final approval from the city of Charleston.
2018
Charleston City Council passes a resolution apologizing for the city’s role in slavery and the slave trade.
2020
Public support grew for the removal of a statue of former Vice President John C. Calhoun, a state’s right supporter before the Civil War, from Marion Square. It was removed and put into storage.
2023
The IAAM opens in Charleston after raising about $120 million from government, corporate and private sources.
Sources include AfricanAmericanCharleston.com, the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, Charleston County Public Library and International African American Museum.
Photos courtesy IAAM; Brenda J. Peart; Library of Congress; Brownie Harris, City of Charleston; Walter Albertin; Lawrence Jackson; Avery Research Center; Rūta Smith
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