South Carolina’s Civil Rights Trail

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Covering landmarks and historic sites in 14 states, the U.S. Civil Rights Trail is an ambitious project designed to commemorate the struggle for racial equality in America. Organized by state tourism departments, including the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, the trail leads to more than 100 churches, private homes and other landmarks—including these eight locations in the Palmetto State. For more on the U.S. Civil Rights Trail project, visit civilrightstrail.com.

Summerton

Historic Liberty Hill AME Church

In November 1949, when 13-year-old Beatrice Brown signed a petition demanding that the Clarendon County school district stop discriminating against black children, she could not have known that she was part of a movement that would, within five years, end school segregation in the United States.

Her name, neatly signed on the 10th line, was among 107 signatures of African-American parents and their children. Families signed in alphabetical order, and so the Briggs family—Harry and Eliza and their children—were the first to affix their signatures. Thus, when the lawsuit was filed it became Briggs vs. Elliott, the latter being Roderick W. Elliott, chairman of School District 22. On May 17, 1954, Briggs vs. Elliott and four similar cases were decided by the U.S. Supreme Court under the umbrella of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling ending school segregation.

Beatrice Brown Rivers, now 82, says that what African-American parents in the county originally wanted was school-bus transportation. “Children were walking as much as nine miles one way to go to school, regardless of the weather,” she recalls.

When efforts to secure that transportation failed, community leaders met at private homes and Historic Liberty Hill AME Church in Summerton to plan an alternative strategy. As the historic marker in front of the church notes, 19 members of its congregation were plaintiffs in Briggs vs. Elliott.

Today, the church and its historic marker draw history buffs and school groups from across the state and nation to Summerton, where visitors can get a glimpse at civil rights history, says the Rev. Robert China, the church’s pastor.

China would like to see more visitors learn about the civil rights struggle in Clarendon County. With that goal in mind, he formed the Summerton Community Action Group to publish a brochure and place more historic markers throughout the community.

“Too often we forget our history,” he says, sitting in a church pew where decades before civil rights pioneers met to make a better world for their children. “But it is important to know where you’ve been because if you don’t, you just might end up going back there.”

Historic Liberty Hill AME Church is located at 2310 Liberty Hill Road in Summerton. For information about this church and its history, visit libertyhillame.com or call (803) 478-4812. For more Clarendon County sites related to Briggs vs. Elliott, see the “Separate is NOT equal” tour itinerary at GreenbookofSC.com/tours.

St. Helena Island

Penn Center

When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference needed a quiet place to plan strategy during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, it was no accident that they chose the simple cottages and serene environment of Penn Center in St. Helena­.

Founded by abolitionist Laura Towne in 1862 as Penn School, the center was one of the first schools in the nation to provide education for freed slaves. When Towne died in 1901, the curriculum changed from reading, writing and math to one that focused on trades like carpentry, mechanics and farming.

In the late 1940s, student enrollment was in decline as black families moved away from the area and public schools became available to African-Americans. The school closed its doors in 1948 and two years later the facility was renamed Penn Center, hosting interracial conferences and offering community services like day care and a health clinic.

Today, a variety of organizations hold events at Penn Center. The busiest time of year is the second week of November when the Heritage Days Celebration of Gullah culture attracts as many as 10,000 people. During the rest of the year, visitors can visit the York W. Bailey Museum and the Courtney P. Siceloff Welcome Center and Gift Shop, to learn local African-American history and stroll the grounds that played an important part in the struggle for civil rights, says manager Johnnie Wilson.

“I think the reason why Penn Center is still in existence and is still relevant today is that it was the first school for newly freed slaves,” Wilson says. “Without that cornerstone, other schools for African-Americans would not have been established. Penn Center was the trailblazer.”

Penn Center is located at 16 Penn Center Circle West in St. Helena. The York W. Bailey Museum and the Courtney P. Siceloff Welcome Center and Gift Shop are open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Admission to the museum is $7 for adults and $5 for students and children ages 6 to 16. No charge for children 5 and under. For more information, call (843) 838-2474 or visit penncenter.com.

Columbia

Modjeska Monteith Simkins House

For 60 years, Modjeska Monteith Simkins—remembered as the “matriarch of civil rights activists” in South Carolina—lived in a small wood frame house near the corner of Marion Street and Elmwood Avenue in Columbia.

But the dwelling, added in the mid-1990s to the National Register of Historic Places, was more than a private residence. It was also her office, a meeting space for civil rights workers—even a resting place for African-Americans unable to obtain lodging because of their race.

Throughout her long life, which spanned most of the 20th century, Simkins was deeply involved in causes directly linked to civil and social rights in South Carolina.

“She really was not a one-issue person,” says John Sherrer, director of cultural resources for Historic Columbia, the organization that manages the Simkins house.

Simkins was instrumental in the drafting of the Briggs vs. Elliott lawsuit. Before that, she signed on with the NAACP as secretary of the organization’s state conference. Earlier still, from 1931 to 1941, Simkins worked for the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association and traversed the state setting up health clinics to address the problem, which was particularly acute among African-Americans.

After her marriage to businessman Andrew Simkins in 1929, the couple founded Victory Savings Bank and owned Motel Simbeth, businesses that catered to African-Americans. Simkins and her husband were also enthusiastic supporters of The Lighthouse and Informer, the most widely read black newspaper in the state.

Katharine Allen, the research and archives manager for Historic Columbia, says that because Simkins and her husband were financially independent, she was able to devote her time and energy to causes.

“Modjeska was really interested in what it meant to be a citizen—the rights that people should have as citizens and also the responsibilities,” Allen says. “She helped usher in a new era in South Carolina.”

For more information about the Modjeska Monteith Simkins House, call (803) 252-7742 or visit historiccolumbia.org. The house is currently undergoing renovation and closed to tours. It is scheduled to reopen to the public in September 2019.

Greenville

Springfield Baptist Church

Word of the fire at Springfield Baptist Church in Greenville spread quickly through the African-American community on the evening of Jan. 25, 1972, and soon hundreds of people were gathered to watch firefighters work to save the 100-year-old structure. But the fire burned fast, and from the start there was little hope of saving the Gothic Revival house of worship.

Organized in 1867 by 65 former slaves, the church served as a venue for the town’s black citizens to meet and form strategies as they struggled to desegregate schools, libraries, parks, airports and restaurants. Ulysses J. Thompson, then a young church deacon in his late 20s, stood across the street with other church members as the flames lit up the night sky. They prayed. They sang spirituals. And they cried.

“It was one of the saddest nights of my life,” says Thompson, now 78, and chairman of the church’s deacon ministry.

The following day, congregants recovered the church’s bell from the ashes, and it stands today near the Springfield Baptist Church—rebuilt in 1976—as a reminder of the church’s storied past.

During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, there were only a few places where African-Americans could gather safely, and in Greenville the old Springfield Baptist Church was that place. In January 1960, less than a year after baseball great Jackie Robinson was asked to leave a white waiting room at the local airport, local leaders organized an airport protest at this church. When the NAACP and the Urban League needed a meeting place to form local chapters, there was no question but that they would meet at Springfield Baptist. And it was at the church that plans were made for a small group of African-Americans to challenge a whites-only policy at the local swimming pool and skating rink at Cleveland Park.

“Church was not just a place to worship, but also a gathering place for social consciousness,” says the Rev. John H. Corbitt, who served as church pastor for 37 years. “You came to church for worship. You came back for the NAACP meeting.”

Springfield Baptist Church is located at 600 E. McBee Ave. in Greenville. The church’s website is springfieldbaptist.com.

Orangeburg

Orangeburg massacre monument

On the morning after the Orangeburg massacre—a tragic confrontation in which state troopers opened fire on unarmed protesters on the campus of South Carolina State College, killing three students and wounding nearly 30 others—photographer Cecil Williams walked among the debris.

“It looked like a battleground,” says Williams at his Orangeburg studio, holding a book of his images that documented the horrific events. “I started picking up different things from the ground, including some shotgun shells that had been used by the highway patrol.”

Williams, now 80, asked a young African-American man to hold the shells in his cupped hands, raised his camera to his eye and clicked the shutter. The resulting black-and-white image, which later appeared in newspapers around the country and in Time and Newsweek magazines, seemed to summarize what happened on the evening of Feb. 8, 1968.

Throughout the week, African-American students had been protesting a “whites only” policy at the nearby All Star Bowling Alley. Just two nights before, students and police had clashed in the bowling alley’s parking lot. At least one officer was injured, and a woman was beaten by police.

The confrontation heightened tensions, and Gov. Robert McNair called in National Guard troops, who joined South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) officers and state troopers at the entrances to South Carolina State College and neighboring Claflin College. Their aim was to confine students to the campuses and avoid further violence.

What happened next has never been conclusively proved and there are many conflicting details and memories of the event. Somewhere around 10:30 p.m.—shortly after firefighters had extinguished a huge bonfire which students had built at the S.C. State campus entrance—troopers opened fire on a crowd of students. According to one theory, the shooting may have been triggered by an unexpected police warning shot. In the end, Samuel Hammond Jr. and Henry E. Smith, both 19-year-old students at the college, and Delano Middleton, 17, a local high school student, were killed.

Today, a memorial on what is now South Carolina State University honors the memory of those who died. It is located not far from where the shootings occurred and where Williams took his iconic photo.

“The Orangeburg massacre was the first incident of its kind on any American university campus, but received relatively little media coverage,” states a memorial signboard bearing the photographs of the men who died. “The shootings mark one of the least remembered chapters in U.S. Civil Rights history.”

Visitors to the memorial will need to get a pass from the gate guard at South Carolina State University at 300 College Street in Orangeburg. For more information, call (800) 260-5956.

Charleston

Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church

Near the end of his three-hour African-American history tour of Charleston, guide Al Miller turns his bus onto Calhoun Street and stops in front of Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, site of the horrific 2015 mass shooting by a white supremacist that left nine worshipers dead and five others wounded.

Earlier in the tour, Miller had told his passengers that two of his relatives died in the church attack, and a hush falls over the group as he directs attention to a side door on the west side of the building.

“That is the door that the shooter entered,” he says.

A simple plaque on the exterior wall of the church commemorates the tragedy at the oldest black congregation in the city, but plans are underway for the Emanuel Nine Memorial, a $15 million public park to be built on the church grounds. Designed by Michael Arad, the architect behind the National September 11 Memorial in New York, the project will honor the victims and the church’s ability to overcome hatred and violence with grace and forgiveness, says John Darby, co-chair of the Mother Emanuel Memorial Foundation Board.

On the west side of the church, Arad’s plans call for a memorial court with a fountain inscribed with the names of those who lost their lives. Two high-backed benches on either side of the fountain will face each other. At the north end of the memorial court, a smaller space that Arad calls a “contemplation basin” is planned so that visitors can pray.

On the east side of the church, plans call for a survivor’s garden—a lawn surrounded by trees and stone benches. “The survivor’s garden is a place where children can run around and people can have coffee and just enjoy being outside after church,” Darby says.

The board is in the “quiet stage” of fundraising and Darby says that it is possible that funds for the memorial could be raised as soon as next year.

“We are making good progress,” Darby says. “Everyone we have approached has contributed. Not one person has rejected us. It is incredible.”

Mother Emanuel AME Church is located at 110 Calhoun Street in Charleston. Further information about the church can be found at emanuelamechurch.org. For details about Al Miller’s African-American history tours of Charleston, visit sitesandinsightstours.com or call (843) 552-9995. For more information on the memorial project, visit emanuelnine.org.

Greenwood

Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historic Preservation Site

When he was a child, Benjamin E. Mays—who later would become president of Morehouse College, adviser to three U.S. presidents, a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and an architect of the American civil rights movement—watched a group of armed white men on horseback humiliate his father in front of their modest sharecropper house in Greenwood County.

“They cursed my father, drew their guns and made him salute, made him take off his hat and bow down to them several times,” Mays wrote in his 1971 autobiography Born to Rebel. “Then they rode away.”

The memory of that terrifying childhood event stayed with Mays throughout his life, and he acknowledged that it played a defining role in his efforts to secure civil rights for all people.

Today, the wooden home in which Mays was born is the centerpiece of the Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historic Preservation Site. Mays lived to be 89 years old and, when he died in 1984, left behind a legacy of accomplishments that are enshrined in a museum only a few steps away from his childhood home. Displays include the cap and gown Mays wore when he received his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago and a wall listing the 56 honorary degrees he received over the years.

Frequently referred to as the “father of the civil rights movement,” Mays was president of Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1944 when Martin Luther King Jr. enrolled in the school. Over the ensuing years, Mays and the young man became close friends—indeed, King called Mays his “spiritual mentor” and “intellectual father,” and when the civil rights leader was assassinated in 1968, it was Mays who delivered his eulogy.

“No resident of Greenwood County has done more to change the landscape of American history than Dr. Mays,” says Christopher B. Thomas, director of the Mays site. “And I might further add that I don’t believe that any South Carolinian has made a greater contribution to American society than he did.”

The Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historic Preservation Site is located at 229 N. Hospital St. in Greenwood. Tours are available on Mondays and Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and on Wednesdays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Full details can be found at mayshousemuseum.org or by calling (864) 229-8833.

Rock Hill

Friendship 9 historical marker

When the small group of African-American civil rights protesters reached McCrory’s Variety Store on Main Street in Rock Hill, police were waiting for them. And when they entered the store and sat at the whites-only lunch counter to order a meal, they were quickly arrested and hustled out of a back door and across a parking lot to the city jail.

Later, when the nine protesters refused to pay the $100 fine for trespassing and disorderly conduct, they were ordered to spend 30 days in prison. Because they were students at nearby Friendship Junior College, they soon became known as the Friendship 9.

The arrests and their strategy of “jail, no bail” marked a turning point in the civil rights movement. Prior to their January 1961 arrests, protesters would simply pay the fine. But it became apparent to some in the movement—particularly to the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)—that paying the fine did little to promote their cause.

“Jail, no bail, started right here,” says Willie McCleod, 76, one of the surviving members of the Friendship 9. He sits in a booth eating lunch with a friend only a few steps from the counter where he was arrested nearly 60 years earlier.

“The trick to the whole thing was the nonviolent training that we received,” McCleod says, noting that CORE leaders carefully selected who would participate in the protest, eliminating people whose tempers might get the better of them or who might be psychologically unprepared to spend a month behind bars.

McCleod and the others were taken to the York County Prison Camp to do their time.

“They picked the hardest, dirtiest jobs for us to do,” says McCleod, who was 18 at the time. “We dug ditches, cut underbrush—any job they assigned.”

Three years after the men finished their sentence, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Still, it took authorities until 2015 to revisit the case of the Friendship 9. And in January of that year, a state judge vacated the convictions.

Today, the fate of the old McCrory’s Variety Store location is uncertain. For a while, it was renamed McCrory’s Five & Dine and operated with its now-famous lunch counter holding photographs and short biographies of the Friendship 9. In January 2019, however, the restaurant closed for business.

The site of the Friendship 9 sit-in is located at 135 East Main Street in Rock Hill. A historic marker dedicated to the protest is located in front of the closed diner. For more on the historic protest, visit friendship9.org.

The International African American Museum

If all goes according to plan, work on Charleston’s long-planned International African American Museum (IAAM) will begin later this year and open to the public sometime in 2021.

The museum, expected to cost more than $100 million, will feature state-of-the-art exhibits on the African-American experience, and genealogy resources for African-Americans researching their personal family histories.

The 40,000-square-foot facility is set to be built on the site of the former Gadsden’s Wharf where enslaved Africans were sold at auction by the tens of thousands. Historians believe that roughly half of all enslaved Africans brought to this country arrived at this location, and so the creation of a major museum here carries particular importance, says Elijah Heyward III, the museum’s chief operating officer.

Few museums “benefit from being on the site where the history it honors happened,” Heyward says. “Our work here underscores the centrality of this sacred site to not only South Carolina history but American history, and honors the many enslaved Africans and their ancestors who sacrificed and contributed a great deal to the landscape of American history and culture.”

For more information about the International African American Museum, visit iaamuseum.org.

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