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| Location | 1865 Lake Drive in Orangeburg, South Carolina |
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| Type | History |
| Website | www |
The Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum is a museum in Orangeburg, South Carolina, commemorating the civil rights movement. The curator of the museum is photographer Cecil J. Williams. [1]
The museum holds 35 historical exhibits consisting of 500 photographs and over 200 artifacts [2] concerning the civil rights movement in South Carolina during the 1950s and 1960s. [3] The exhibits focus of major events, such as the Briggs v. Elliott Supreme Court case, the Orangeburg Freedom Movement, Harvey Gantt admission to Clemson University, the Orangeburg Massacre, and the 1969 Charleston hospital strike. [4]
The museum also offers other attractions, including a civil rights movement timeline, an 800-name recognition wall, a digitization laboratory, a sign-in wall, media and presentation center, community meeting room, library, and gift shop. [2]
The 3,500-square-foot museum opened in 2019. It is located in a building Williams designed in 1986. [5]
Initially, Williams funded the museum himself until it generated interests from visitors and attracted regional and national grants. In 2020, the museum was featured on national television, and National Geographic. [5] He received a $100,000 donation for the museum a few months after its opening. [6]
H. L. Hunley, also known as the Hunley, CSS H. L. Hunley, or CSS Hunley, was a submarine of the Confederate States of America that played a small part in the American Civil War. Hunley demonstrated the advantages and dangers of undersea warfare. She was the first combat submarine to sink a warship (USS Housatonic), although Hunley was not completely submerged and, following her attack, was lost along with her crew before she could return to base. Twenty-one crewmen died in the three sinkings of Hunley during her short career. She was named for her inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley, shortly after she was taken into government service under the control of the Confederate States Army at Charleston, South Carolina.
Fort Sumter is a sea fort built on an artificial island near Charleston, South Carolina to defend the region from a naval invasion. It was built after British forces captured and occupied Washington during the War of 1812 via a naval attack. The fort was still incomplete in 1861 when the Battle of Fort Sumter occurred from April 12 to 13, sparking the American Civil War. It was severely damaged during the battle and left in ruins. Although there were some efforts at reconstruction after the war, the fort as conceived was never completed. Since the middle of the 20th century, Fort Sumter has been open to the public as part of the Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, operated by the National Park Service.
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.
Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park located in Charleston County, in coastal South Carolina. It mainly protects Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, the Charleston Light and Liberty Square. It was known as Fort Sumter National Monument until it was renamed in the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed March 12, 2019.
Danny Lyon is an American photographer and filmmaker.
The Orangeburg Massacre was a shooting of student protesters that took place on February 8, 1968, on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, United States. Nine highway patrolmen and one city police officer opened fire on a crowd of African American students, killing three and injuring twenty-eight. The shootings were the culmination of a series of protests against racial segregation at a local bowling alley, marking the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American university.
Claflin University is a private historically black university in Orangeburg, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1869 after the American Civil War by northern missionaries for the education of freedmen and their children, it offers bachelor's and master's degrees.
Doris Adelaide Derby was an American activist and documentary photographer. She was the adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Georgia State University and the founding director of their Office of African-American Student Services and Programs. She was active in the Mississippi civil rights movement, and her work discusses the themes of race and African-American identity. She was a working member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and co-founder of the Free Southern Theater. Her photography has been exhibited internationally. Two of her photographs were published in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, to which she also contributed an essay about her experiences in the Mississippi civil rights movement.
South Carolina's 6th congressional district is in central and eastern South Carolina. It includes all of Allendale, Bamberg, Calhoun, Clarendon, Hampton, and Williamsburg counties and parts of Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester, Florence, Jasper, Orangeburg, Richland and Sumter counties. With a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of D+14, it is the only Democratic district in South Carolina.
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in December 1860, and was one of the founding member states of the Confederacy in February 1861. The bombardment of the beleaguered U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, is generally recognized as the first military engagement of the war. The retaking of Charleston in February 1865, and raising the flag again at Fort Sumter, was used for the Union symbol of victory.
Cleveland "Cleve" Sellers Jr. is an American educator and civil rights activist.
Esau Jenkins was a South Carolina African-American Human Rights leader, businessman, local preacher, and community organizer. He was the founder and leader of many organizations and institutions which helped improved the political, educational, housing, health and economic conditions of Sea Island residents.
Gloria Blackwell, also known as Gloria Rackley, was an African-American civil rights activist and educator. She was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in Orangeburg, South Carolina during the 1960s, attracting some national attention and a visit by Dr. Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her activities were widely covered by the local press.
Cecil J. Williams is an American photographer, publisher, author and inventor who is best known for his photographs documenting the civil rights movement in South Carolina.
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.
Confederate Defenders of Charleston is a monument in Charleston, South Carolina, United States. The monument honors Confederate soldiers from Charleston, most notably those who served at Fort Sumter during the American Civil War. Built with funds provided by a local philanthropist, the monument was designed by Hermon Atkins MacNeil and was dedicated in White Point Garden in 1932. The monument, standing 17 feet (5.2 m) tall, features two bronze statues of a sword and shield-bearing defender standing in front of a symbolic representation of the city of Charleston. In recent years, the monument has been the subject of vandalism and calls for removal as part of a larger series of removal of Confederate monuments and memorials in the United States.
The Dr. Cyril O. Spann Medical Office, located in Columbia, South Carolina, served African-American patients during de jure and de facto racial segregation in the United States. Built in 1963, it was added to United States National Register of Historic Places on May 20, 2019.
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