| Charleston County Public Library | |
|---|---|
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| 32°47′19″N79°55′52″W / 32.7886°N 79.9311°W | |
| Type | Public library |
| Service area | Charleston County, South Carolina |
The Charleston County Public Library is a public library in Charleston, South Carolina. It began operations in 1931 as the Charleston Free Library.
The Charleston County Public Library began operations in 1931 as the Charleston Free Library with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Rosenwald Fund. [1] [2]
Under the terms of its grant from the Rosenwald Fund, the main branch of the library—first located at 121 Rutledge Avenue and later at 94 Rutledge Avenue—was racially integrated. [2] In practice, however, while access to the building itself was open to all races, specific opening hours were observed for each specific race. [2] Segregation began to gradually loosen in the early 1960s and was formally abolished in 1965. [2] [3]
The main branch of the library was moved from the Routledge Avenue location to a new facility on Marion Square, adjacent to the state arsenal, in 1960. [4] In 1998 it moved to its fourth, and — as of 2024 — current location at 68 Calhoun Street. [4]
In 2021, the Charleston County Public Library was the only public library in South Carolina given a four star rating by the Library Journal . [5] In 2022, it moved to a five star rating, the Library Journal's highest rating. [6]
As of 2021, the Charleston County Public Library operated four branch libraries and seven community libraries. [7]
The library is governed by a board of trustees appointed by the Charleston County Council. [8]
The College of Charleston is a public university in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded in 1770 and chartered in 1785, it is the oldest university in South Carolina, the 13th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, and the oldest municipal college in the nation.
The Cobb County Public Library System (CCPLS) is a system of 15 public libraries in Cobb County, Georgia, United States, excluding its second-largest city of Smyrna, which runs its own Smyrna Public Library. CobbCat.org is the online database of all CCPLS holdings.
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.
The San Francisco Public Library is the public library system of the city and county of San Francisco. The Main Library is located at Civic Center, at 100 Larkin Street. The library system has won several awards, such as Library Journal's Library of the Year award in 2018. The library is well-funded due to the city's dedicated Library Preservation Fund that was established by a 1994 ballot measure. The Preservation Fund was renewed twice, by ballot measures in 2007 and 2022.
Segregation academies are private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools. They were founded between 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, and 1976, when the court ruled similarly about private schools.
The Rosenwald School project built more than 5,000 schools, shops, and teacher homes in the United States primarily for the education of African-American children in the South during the early 20th century. The project was the product of the partnership of Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish-American clothier who became part-owner and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company and the African-American leader, educator, and philanthropist Booker T. Washington, who was president of the Tuskegee Institute.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (CCPL) has 27 branches that serve 47 communities in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. It was ranked the number one public library in the United States among libraries serving populations of more than 500,000 by the Hennen's American Public Library Ratings 2010. In 2022, more than 10 million items were borrowed by its 737,702 cardholders, and 2.99 million visits were made to branches.
The Berkeley Public Library is the public library system for Berkeley, California. It consists of the Central Library, Claremont Branch, North Branch, West Branch, Tarea Hill Pittman South Branch, and the Tool Lending Library, which is one of the nation's first such libraries.
Clark County Public Library is the public library of Clark County, Ohio, United States. It is based in Springfield, Ohio and has a collection of approximately 500,000 items.
Hampton Plantation, also known as Hampton Plantation House and Hampton Plantation State Historic Site, is a historic plantation, now a state historic site, north of McClellanville, South Carolina. The plantation was established in 1735, and its main house exhibits one of the earliest known examples in the United States of a temple front in domestic architecture. It is also one of the state's finest examples of a wood frame Georgian plantation house. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970.
The Governor John Rutledge House is a historic house at 116 Broad Street in Charleston, South Carolina. Completed in 1763 by an unknown architect, it was the home of Founding Father John Rutledge, a Governor of South Carolina and a signer of the United States Constitution. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1973.
John Rutledge was an American Founding Father, politician, and jurist who served as one of the original associate justices of the Supreme Court and the second chief justice of the United States. Additionally, he served as the first president of South Carolina and later as its first governor after the Declaration of Independence was signed.
Julius Waties Waring was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina who played an important role in the early legal battles of the American Civil Rights Movement. His dissent in Briggs v. Elliott was foundational to Brown v. Board of Education.
Broad Street is a street in Charleston, South Carolina. It is known for its wealth of historic resources as well as being on the American Planning Association (APA)'s list of "great streets". Broad Street is characterized by its historic architecture maintained through a history of persistent and scrupulous historic preservation. Broad Street today is a mix of residences, historic buildings, public uses, as well as restaurants and nightlife uses.
Laura Mary Bragg was an American museum director who became the first woman to run a publicly funded art museum in America when she was named the director of the Charleston Museum in 1920. She later directed the Berkshire Museum in Massachusetts and advised on the reorganization of the Valentine Museum in Virginia. She is also known for developing a widely copied form of traveling museum exhibition for schools called a "Bragg Box."
Henderson High School was a public secondary school in Starkville, Mississippi. United States. It served as the high school for black students until the public schools were integrated in 1970. Grades k–8 were also located on the same property. After integration, the buildings served as a junior high school and later as an elementary school.
The Greenville Eight was a group of African American students, seven in high school and one in college, that successfully protested the segregated library system in Greenville, South Carolina in 1960. Among the eight was Jesse Jackson, a college freshman. As a result of the staged sit-in, the library system in the city integrated.
Susan Dart Butler was an American librarian and milliner.
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.
Cynthia Graham Hurd was a librarian and community leader in Charleston, South Carolina. She was killed in the Charleston church shooting at the age of 54. After her death, the Cynthia Graham Hurd Foundation was created, the St. Andrews Library branch of the Charleston County Public Library was renamed the Cynthia Graham Hurd St. Andrews Regional Library, and a mural was painted on the John L. Dart Branch Library in her honor. Annual honorary library events, an award, and several scholarship funds have been established in her name.