The University of South Carolina is a public research university in Columbia, South Carolina. It is the flagship of the University of South Carolina System and the largest university in the state by enrollment. Its main campus is on over 359 acres (145 ha) in downtown Columbia, close to the South Carolina State House. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities with Highest Research Activity". It houses the largest collection of Robert Burns and Scottish literature materials outside Scotland and the world's largest Ernest Hemingway collection.
Modjeska Monteith Simkins was an important leader of African-American public health reform, social reform and the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina.
Robert Brown Elliott was a British-born American politician of British Afro-Caribbean ethnic background. He was a member of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina, serving from 1871 to 1874.
The South Carolina State House is the building housing the government of the U.S. state of South Carolina, which includes the South Carolina General Assembly and the offices of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina. Located in the capital city of Columbia near the corner of Gervais and Assembly Streets, the building also housed the Supreme Court until 1971.
Ernest Adolphus Finney Jr. was the first African-American Supreme Court Justice appointed to the South Carolina Supreme Court since the Reconstruction Era. He spent the last years of his life in Sumter, South Carolina. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
Airport High School in West Columbia, South Carolina, United States, is a public high school offering education for grades 9 – 12, serving the communities of West Columbia, Cayce, South Congaree, Pine Ridge, and parts of Gaston. A part of Lexington County School District 2, it derives its name from its location next to (CAE) Columbia Metropolitan Airport. Sports teams are known as the Eagles. The main athletic rival is the Brookland-Cayce High School Bearcats.
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.
Clementa Carlos Pinckney was an American politician and pastor who served as a Democratic member of the South Carolina Senate, representing the 45th District from 2000 until his murder in 2015. He was previously a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1997 through 2000.
Vincent Austin Sheheen is an American attorney and politician. He was a member of the South Carolina Senate from 2004 to 2020, representing the 27th District, which comprises Chesterfield, Kershaw, and Lancaster counties. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 2001 to 2004. He ran for Governor of South Carolina twice, in 2010 and 2014, losing both times to Nikki Haley. In 2020, Sheheen lost reelection to Republican Penry Gustafson.
Harvey Smith Peeler Jr. is an American politician. He is a member of the South Carolina Senate, representing the 14th District from since 1980, initially as a Democrat, and from October 1989, as a Republican. He was the Senate Majority Leader from 2005 to 2016 and president of the senate from 2019 to 2021. In 2021, he became Chair of the Finance Committee after the death of Hugh Leatherman.
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, which 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.
John L. Scott Jr. was an American politician who served as a member of the South Carolina Legislature from 1991 until his death. Scott was a small business owner in Columbia, South Carolina.
The following table indicates the parties of elected officials in the U.S. state of South Carolina:
Jonathan Jasper Wright was an African-American lawyer who served as a state senator and judge on the Supreme Court of the State of South Carolina during Reconstruction from 1870 to 1877.
Good Samaritan-Waverly Hospital, also known as “Good Sam” Hospital and Waverly Hospital, is a historic hospital for African-American patients located in Columbia, South Carolina. It was built in 1952, and is a two-story, brick building in the Moderne style. The hospital housed a pharmacy, laboratory, X-ray room, staff dining room, two operating rooms, and 50 beds to service the local community. The hospital closed in August 1973.
The Charleston church shooting, also known as the Charleston church massacre, was an anti-black mass shooting and hate crime that occurred on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina. Nine people were killed, and one was injured, during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black church in the southern United States. Among the fatalities was the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney. All ten victims were African Americans. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting at a place of worship in U.S. history and is the deadliest mass shooting in South Carolina history.
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, colloquially Mother Emanuel, is a church in Charleston, South Carolina, founded in 1817. It is the oldest AME church in the Southern United States; founded the previous year in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, AME was the first independent black denomination in the nation. Mother Emanuel has one of the oldest black congregations south of Baltimore.
Margie Bright Matthews is a Democratic member of the South Carolina Senate, representing the 45th District since 2015, when she won a special election to succeed Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in the Charleston church shooting in 2015. She is an attorney who founded her own law firm.
Samuel Jones Lee was an American Civil War veteran of the Confederacy, politician and lawyer from South Carolina. He served as the first African-American Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives and was a committed member of the Republican Party.
Tanya Amber Gee was a judge of the South Carolina Circuit Court.
Portrait of S.C. Senator Clementa Pinckney
Portrait of Judge Matthew J. Perry
Portrait of Modjeska Monteith Simkins
