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.
James Enos Clyburn is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for South Carolina's 6th congressional district. First elected in 1992,Clyburn's congressional district includes most of the majority-black precincts in and around Columbia and Charleston,as well as most of the majority-black areas outside Beaufort and nearly all of South Carolina's share of the Black Belt. Since Joe Cunningham's departure in 2021,Clyburn has been the only Democrat in South Carolina's congressional delegation.
Modjeska Monteith Simkins was an important leader of African-American public health reform,social reform and the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina.
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.
South Carolina's 2nd congressional district is in central and southwestern South Carolina. The district spans from Columbia to the South Carolina side of the Augusta,Georgia metropolitan area.
Robert Evander McNair Sr. was the 108th governor of South Carolina,a Democrat,who served from 1965 to 1971.
William Jennings Bryan Dorn was a United States politician from South Carolina who represented the western part of the state in the United States House of Representatives from 1947 to 1949 and from 1951 to 1975 as a Democrat.
The South Carolina Conference is an annual conference of the United Methodist Church. This conference serves the state of South Carolina with its administrative offices and the office of the bishop being in Columbia,South Carolina. It is part of the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference.
Kay Patterson is an American politician who was a Democratic member of the South Carolina Senate,representing the 19th District from 1985 to his retirement in 2008. He was previously a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1975 through 1985.
Matthew James Perry Jr. was an attorney and in 1979 appointed as the first African-American United States district judge in South Carolina,serving on the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. In 1976,he had been the first African-American attorney from the Deep South to be appointed to the federal judiciary when he served on the United States Court of Military Appeals. Perry established his career with civil rights litigation,defending Gloria Blackwell in Orangeburg,South Carolina,in her 1962 suit against her arrest for sitting in the whites-only area of the regional hospital while waiting for emergency treatment for her daughter. Other landmark cases included achieving the integration of Clemson University and reapportionment of the state legislature.
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.
Gilda Cobb-Hunter is a Democratic member of the South Carolina House of Representatives. She is the first African American woman elected to the State House from Orangeburg County. Cobb-Hunter is the former representative for South Carolina's 66th district. Following redistricting and the 2022 general election,Cobb-Hunter now represents South Carolina House District 95 and David L. O'Neal represents South Carolina's 66th district.
Jacob Moorer was a South Carolina lawyer and civil rights activist. He frequently fought cases in opposition to the elector provisions of the 1895 South Carolina Constitution,which he viewed as disenfranchising blacks. His most famous case was Franklin v. South Carolina,a murder case involving black sharecropper Pink Franklin which he and John Adams,Sr. appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
Franklin v. South Carolina,218 U.S. 161 (1910) appealed the conviction of Pink Franklin for the murder of South Carolina Constable Henry H. Valentine in 1907. Franklin was a sharecropper who wished to leave his employer although his employer had advanced Franklin wages under a contract based on the so-called "peonage laws". A warrant was obtained and when Valentine came to the house,a shootout occurred,killing Valentine and injuring Franklin,his wife Patsy,and another constable who was there. The defense included claims that Franklin acted in self-defense and that the peonage laws were unjust. In appeal,the defense claimed that the make-up of the jury,all white based on the requirement that the jury be based on those who were eligible to vote,was based on unconstitutional racism in election laws stemming from the 1895 South Carolina constitution. Franklin's conviction was upheld in all appeals,including the appeal before the United States Supreme Court heard in April 1910.
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.
Jaime R. Harrison is an American attorney and politician who is the chair of the Democratic National Committee. He previously served as the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party from 2013 to 2017. Harrison unsuccessfully ran against incumbent senator Lindsey Graham for the South Carolina U.S. Senate seat in the 2020 election.
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.
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.
Sadye L. Logan is a social work academic who is the I. DeQuincey Newman Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Social Work at the University of South Carolina.
Clifton B. Newman is an American attorney and former at-large judge of the South Carolina Circuit Court. He served as a judge since his election by the state's general assembly in 2000. In 2021,he was reelected to a final fourth term and retired in December 2023. In his role as a circuit court judge he presided over several high profile trials,including the trials of Michael Slager,Nathaniel Rowland,and Alex Murdaugh. He currently works for JAMS,a private arbitration association.
