Nine area Black leaders to know

The International African American Museum seeks to tell and share the stories of thousands of enslaved Africans and their families who worked on plantations and in towns to build the South’s agrarian economy. Here are some stories from the past and present that you’ll find in the museum.

Denmark Vesey

(1767-1822), carpenter, insurrectionist

Vesey, born on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, lived on King Street in Charleston with Joseph Vesey, a ship chandler, and his family. Joseph Vesey purchased Denmark when he was 14. Denmark Vesey was literate and multilingual which helped him to succeed at his job dealing with imports and exports. Vesey bought his freedom in 1799 after he won the lottery and lived on Bull Street with his second wife, Susan. Black people, free and enslaved, faced hostility in the city, but the closing of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was the tipping point, according to the S.C. Encyclopedia. Vesey reportedly wanted to lead Black people out of the hostile environment, but the mayor, James Hamilton, and governor, Thomas Bennett, got word of his plans for a violent revolt. Vesey was arrested, tried and found guilty. He was sentenced to hang along with five others. More than 130 Black residents, free and enslaved, were arrested. Thirty-five were hanged while 37 others were exiled to Cuba.

The AME Church was shut down until Vesey’s son, Robert, helped rebuild it after the Civil War. A statue of Vesey today is in Hampton Park.

Richard Cain

(1825-1887), minister, abolitionist, politician

Richard Harvey Cain was born in 1825 in Greenbrier County, Virginia. By age 19, he was licensed to preach in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denomination. In his late 20s, Cain became a prominent abolitionist, working with Frederick Douglas and Martin Delaney. He was transferred to Charleston after the Civil War with the task of building a church. Emanuel AME Church was built on Calhoun Street and gained more than 2,000 members within its first year. Cain also is believed to be the first Black newspaper editor after he purchased the South Carolina Leaders in 1866 and changed its name to the Missionary Record. Cain served in the S.C. Senate (1868-1870) and twice in the U.S. Congress (1873-1875, 1877-1879). He famously stated, “All we ask is equal laws, equal legislation and equal rights.”

Jonathan Jasper Wright

(1840-1885), lawyer, Supreme Court justice

Jonathan Jasper Wright’s formerly enslaved parents found freedom in Ithaca, New York, where he was born in 1840. Wright moved to Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1865 to teach Black federal soldiers and formerly enslaved people. He briefly returned to Pennsylvania to become that state’s first Black attorney. He later became the first Black attorney in South Carolina. After losing an 1868 lieutenant governor’s race, Wright returned to politics to win a seat in the South Carolina Senate. When a vacancy opened in South Carolina Supreme Court in 1870, Wright became the court’s first Black jurist. The Charleston Daily News stated that Wright had “the highest position held by a colored man in the United States.” After resigning in 1877 to dodge the threat of impeachment,Wright opened a law firm at 84 Queen St. in Charleston where he taught law as chairman of the law department at Claflin College.

Robert Smalls

(1851-1915), Civil War hero, statesman

Robert Smalls was born to an enslaved house servant in Beaufort, South Carolina. At a young age, Smalls became a ship rigger and sailor on coastal vessels. Smalls rose to stardom in the Union Navy after he commandeered the Planter, a Confederate boat, and turned it over to Union. He served in the Civil War, eventually receiving a promotion to captain, making Smalls the first Black man to command a ship in the U.S. military. During his three years as captain of the Planter, Smalls was involved in 17 war-time engagements. After the war, Smalls returned to Beaufort and purchased his childhood home. As a hero, he became an influential political leader, becoming a core founder of the state’s Republican Party. During Reconstruction, Smalls served in the state House of Representatives and the state Senate. In 1874 Smalls was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. “My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be equal of any people anywhere,” Smalls once remarked. His early efforts immortalize him as a key factor in the progression of civil rights.

Septima P. Clark

(1898-1987), educator, civil rights activist

Septima Poinsette Clark was born in 1898 in Charleston, the second of eight children, to parents who prepared her to be a social justice crusader. Clark began her teaching career in 1916 on Johns Island at the underfunded Promise Land School at a time when Black teachers were barred from Charleston County public school classrooms. Clark fought this state law alongside former congressman Thomas E. Miller. She was a member of several organizations including the National Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Clark was later asked to denounce her NAACP membership. When she refused, she was fired. “I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift. I just tried to create a little chaos.” Clark is credited as a founder of a citizenship school with Esau Jenkins to promote literary and political literacy. It served as a model for voter registration across the South for Blacks southerners. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called Clark the “Mother of the Movement” after their collaboration during the civil rights movement.

Maude Callen

(1899-1990), nurse midwife, educator

Maude Callen was born in 1899 in Quincy, Florida. She received her bachelor’s degree from Florida A&M College and she studied nursing at Tuskegee Institute. In 1923, she began her nursing career in Berkeley County as a missionary with the Protestant Episcopal Church. Callen taught children how to read and write and administered vaccinations at local schools. Known for her work as a midwife, Callen helped deliver more than 1,000 babies during her lifetime and provided pre- and post-natal care. She started a lecture series and two-week program to educate women on midwifery. Callen was hired as a public health nurse to supervise midwives when the Social Security Act was enacted in 1935. She worked in the Division of Maternal and Child Health for about 30 years before her retirement in 1971. Before she died in 1990, Callen was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame.

Esau Jenkins

(1910-1972), community organizer, businessman

Esau Jenkins was born in 1910 on Johns Island, South Carolina. He was forced to stop his education in the fourth grade to help his family financially. Jenkins valued education and its accessibility to children. Doing whatever he could to help, he drove Black children on the island to their public schools. In 1945, he started to bus students across the Charleston area. To continue his mission, Jenkins established the Progressive Club, teaching adults the importance of their right to vote and to keep them informed so they can uphold their civic responsibilities. The citizenship school, founded by Jenkins and Septima P. Clark, helped Black adults become literate and register to vote. According to his family, his motto was, “Love is progress; hate is expensive.” A Volkswagen van with that painted on it is in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American Historic and Culture in Washington, D.C.

James E. “Jim” Clyburn

(1940-present), educator, commissioner, politician

U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn was born in Sumter, South Carolina. He received his bachelor’s degree from what is now S.C. State University. Clyburn has a long career in public service, starting in 1962 when he was a teacher, employment counselor and youth and community leader for nearly a decade. He entered the political realm as a member of S.C. Gov. John C. West’s staff in 1974 and was eventually promoted to become South Carolina’s human affairs commissioner. Clyburn won his first election in 1992, becoming the state’s first Black congressman since 1897. One of Clyburn’s priorities is educational equity. “Education is the great equalizer and shouldn’t be limited to the wealthiest few,” he said. In 1988, he was elected chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Clyburn was re-elected to Congress in 2022 to serve his 16th-consecutive term in the state’s Sixth Congressional District.

Clementa C. Pinckney

(1973-2015), Religious and political prodigy

The Rev. Clementa Carlos “Clem” Pinckney, a native of Beaufort, South Carolina, was a member of the South Carolina Senate and pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston. Pinckney stepped into the pulpit at age 13 and five years later he was assigned his first church. Pinckney received degrees in public administration and divinity. He was pursuing a doctorate in ministry when a gunman on June 17, 2015, entered Emanuel AME Church, killing him and eight other members of the church. President Barack Obama delivered Pinckney’s eulogy on June 26, 2015, at the College of Charleston. Pinckney once said, “Our calling is not just within the walls of the congregation, but we are part of the life and community in which our condition resides.” Pinckney was well known for his intertwining of civil rights activism and policymaking with the gospel tradition, focusing on gun control and police reform.

Owen Kowalewski of Johns Island is a City Paper intern who attends Furman University.

Photos courtesy Brenda J. Peart; Collin Gonze; S.C. Hall of Fame; Library of Congress; Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries

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