South Carolina is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia to the southwest and south across the Savannah River. Along with North Carolina, it makes up the Carolinas region of the East Coast. South Carolina is the 40th-largest and 24th-most populous U.S. state with a recorded population of 5,118,425 according to the 2020 census. In 2019, its GDP was $213.45 billion. South Carolina is composed of 46 counties. The capital is Columbia with a population of 136,632 in 2020; while its most populous city is Charleston with a 2020 population of 150,227. The Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, SC Combined Statistical Area is the most populous combined metropolitan area in the state, with an estimated 2023 population of 1,590,636.
Charleston is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint of South Carolina's coastline on Charleston Harbor, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean formed by the confluence of the Ashley, Cooper, and Wando rivers. Charleston had a population of 150,227 at the 2020 census. The population of the Charleston metropolitan area, comprising Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester counties, was estimated to be 849,417 in 2023. It ranks as the third-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the state, and the 71st-most populous in the United States.
Orangeburg, also known as The Garden City, is the principal city in and the county seat of Orangeburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population of the city was 13,964 according to the 2020 census. The city is located 37 miles southeast of Columbia, on the north fork of the Edisto River.
North Charleston is a city in Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester counties in the U.S. state of South Carolina. As of the 2020 census, North Charleston had a population of 114,852, making it the third-most populous city in the state, and the 248th-most populous city in the United States. North Charleston is a principal city within the Charleston-North Charleston, SC Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 849,417 in 2023.
Briggs v. Elliott, 342 U.S. 350 (1952), on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, challenged school segregation in Summerton, South Carolina. It was the first of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional by violating the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Following the Brown decision, the district court issued a decree that struck down the school segregation law in South Carolina as unconstitutional and required the state's schools to integrate. Harry and Eliza Briggs, Reverend Joseph A. DeLaine, and Levi Pearson were awarded Congressional Gold Medals posthumously in 2003.
Charleston Southern University (CSU) is a private university in North Charleston, South Carolina, United States. It is affiliated with the South Carolina Baptist Convention.
Septima Poinsette Clark was an African American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Septima Clark's work was commonly under-appreciated by Southern male activists. She became known as the "Queen Mother" or "Grandmother" of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. commonly referred to Clark as "The Mother of the Movement". Clark's argument for her position in the Civil Rights Movement was one that claimed "knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn't."
The Master of Arts in Liberal Studies or Master of Liberal Arts is a graduate degree that aims to provide both depth and breadth of study in the liberal arts. It is by nature an interdisciplinary program, generally pulling together coursework from a number of disciplines such as behavioral sciences, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences designed to train students to think critically and contextually about their own fields of discipline as well a diverse range of issues. Similar graduate degrees are known as Master of Liberal Arts, Master of Liberal Studies (MLS), Artium Liberalium Magister, Magister Artium Liberalium, and Doctor of Liberal Studies (DLS). Characteristics that distinguish these degrees include curricular flexibility and interdisciplinary synthesis via a master's thesis or capstone project.
Dreher High School is a co-educational four-year public high school in Richland County School District One located in Columbia, South Carolina, United States. Established in 1938, Dreher is one of the oldest public high schools in South Carolina. In 2022, Dreher was ranked the seventh-best high school in South Carolina and 1,017th in national rankings by U.S. News & World Report.
William Bullein Johnson was an American Baptist minister, one of the founders of the South Carolina State Baptist Convention in 1821, and later was the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1845 to 1851. Johnson is also the founder of Johnson Female Seminary, later renamed Johnson University, in 1848, the predecessor to Anderson University.
The Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture is a division of the College of Charleston library system. The center is located on the site of the former Avery Normal Institute in the Harleston village district at 125 Bull Street in Charleston, South Carolina. This historic secondary school trained Black students for professional careers and leadership roles, and served as a hub for Charleston’s African-American community from 1865 to 1954.
The History of The Citadel began in the early 1820s with the formation of a militia and state arsenal in response to an alleged slave revolt in 1822. By 1842 the arsenal grew into an academy, with the Legislature establishing it as the South Carolina Military Academy. Cadets played a key role in the Civil War by assisting in the battalion firing upon a federal ship three months before the war began. Many Confederate officers attended the school. Renamed in 1910 as The Citadel, the school's academic reputation grew. After moving the campus near Hampton Park in 1922, the college has grown substantially. In 1969, graduate student Maxine Hudson became the first woman to earn a degree from The Citadel. The Citadel saw the graduation of its first Black student, Charles D. Foster in 1970, 16 years after legal segregation ended in public schools. Following a rocky journey, The Citadel graduated its first female Cadet, future congresswoman Nancy Mace, in 1999. The school has produced many military officers, business, and political leaders throughout its history.
South Carolina Highway 162 (SC 162) is a 13.540-mile (21.791 km) state highway in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The highway connects Adams Run and Rantowles, via Hollywood.
Randolph County High School (RCHS) is a public middle and high school in Wedowee, Alabama, United States. It was established in 1910 and is part of the Randolph County School System. Parts of the school have burned down twice, once in 1910 and again in 1994. The school courted controversy when its principal banned interracial couples at its school dances.
Prior to the civil rights movement in South Carolina, African Americans in the state had very few political rights. South Carolina briefly had a majority-black government during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, but with the 1876 inauguration of Governor Wade Hampton III, a Democrat who supported the disenfranchisement of blacks, African Americans in South Carolina struggled to exercise their rights. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept African Americans from voting, and it was virtually impossible for someone to challenge the Democratic Party, which ran unopposed in most state elections for decades. By 1940, the voter registration provisions written into the 1895 constitution effectively limited African-American voters to 3,000—only 0.8 percent of those of voting age in the state.
Lucille Simmons Whipper was an American Democratic Party politician who served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1986 to 1996. Whipper is most well known for accomplishments in both education and politics. In the educational field, Whipper worked at two high schools before landing a job at the College of Charleston. Here, Whipper implemented an affirmative action program and played a major role in integrating the Avery Institute, a center dedicated to African American history, with the college. In politics, Whipper was the first black woman to represent a Charleston County seat in the legislature. She was also the first woman of color ever to be elected to the South Carolina General Assembly.
Orange County Training School (OCTS) (1916–1948), later known as Lincoln High School (1948–1966), was a public elementary and high school that served African-American students in Chapel Hill, Orange County, North Carolina. It became a Rosenwald School starting in 1924, one of the 800 or more in the state.
Finley School, which grew to include Finley High School, was a school for African Americans in Chester, South Carolina. The school was named for Samuel Louis Finley Sr. who was principal of Chester's "colored" school. He was a leader of the South Carolina Colored Teachers Association.
