African-Americans

Bates had a desire to dance that persisted despite the loss of his leg. So, fitted with an artificial wooden limb—or “peg”—he adapted tap dancing steps to his own specifications.

One of his first actions as mayor was the appointment of a study group to investigate the improvement of air service for the area. As a result, the Richland-Lexington Airport District began operating the Columbia Metropolitan Airport in 1962.

Battery Wagner was the principal fortification on Morris Island during the Civil War.

In later years a tamer version of the music grew in popularity as it became associated with the popular shag, now the state’s official dance.

The first half of the twentieth century was a time of hardship in Beaufort, which by then had declined into one of the poorest places in America.

South Carolina has beauty pageants to celebrate almost every possible age, special interest, location, and agricultural product. The most famous of these is the Miss South Carolina pageant. Among the more well known of local contests are the Miss Sun Fun and Miss Bikini Wahine pageants, held during Myrtle Beach’s Sun Fun Festival.

The school began with a class of ten men, one building (a dilapidated former slave master’s house), and one teacher, the Reverend Timothy L. Dodge. By the end of the twentieth century, Benedict College saw its enrollment grow to nearly three thousand students, making it, in terms of enrollment, one of the largest historically black colleges in the Carolinas and one of the largest private colleges in South Carolina.

Benjamin successfully won a special election to become mayor of Columbia in 2010, becoming the first African American ever to hold that position.

His first and most famous work, Master Skylark, appeared in book form in 1897. A tale of Shakespeare’s time, it is considered one of the best American historical novels for children. In 1898 ill health drove him to Charleston, where he renewed his acquaintance with the Smythe family, whom he had met a few years before at Salt Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Bennett’s second book, Barnaby Lee, was published in 1902.

It was Bennett’s response to the Vesey crisis for which he is best remembered. In a message to the General Assembly on November 22, 1822, the governor chastised Charleston authorities for the mass execution of alleged conspirators.

Established on December 14, 1819, when the General Assembly moved the Marlboro District courthouse to a more central location, by the 1970s the S.C. Highway 9 bypass served travelers passing through Bennettsville on their way to the Grand Strand. Noteworthy natives of Bennettsville include former Bank of America chairman Hugh L. McColl, Jr., Children’s Defense Fund chair Marian Wright Edelman, and former congressman John L. Napier.

Benton will be remembered for some of the songs he wrote and for his stylish delivery. Opinions differ about the lush strings that often accompanied him—roughly the R&B equivalent of the “Nashville Sound”—but his rich, gospel-inflected baritone recalled predecessors such as Billy Eckstine and set the stage for the explosion of “soul music” in the 1960s.

Initially a center of the colony’s thriving Indian trade, the Berkeley County region grew to economic prominence as one of the premier agricultural centers of colonial America. By the end of the twentieth century, Berkeley County had evolved from its agricultural past into a mecca for manufacturing.

On passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which stipulated that businesses engaged in interstate commerce must desegregate Bessinger, who at that time owned four Piggie Park restaurants, refused a black minister who attempted to enter one of his restaurants. The case—Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises—went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The locomotive had its formal debut on Christmas Day 1830, pulling passenger cars from Charleston to Dorchester. Its performance exceeded expectations, with one observer writing that passengers “flew on the wings of the wind at the speed of fifteen to twenty miles per hour, annihilating time and space.”

An expert fundraiser and eloquent speaker among the wealthy northerners who visited Daytona Beach, Bethune developed her small school into a major institution.

While there was an emphasis on teacher education, the school’s primary focus was on industrial training. At a time when the state neglected the education of its black citizens, Bettis Academy offered educational opportunities when few professions were open to blacks.

The Big Apple dance was popularized nationally when it was taken to Manhattan by University of South Carolina students. A combination of the square dance and various jazz routines of the 1920s, the Big Apple caught the attention of white college students who, encouraged by nightclub owner Fat Sam, paid 10¢ to watch dancers from the nightclub balcony.

Black business districts appeared in South Carolina and other southern states after the public segregation of the races became legal in the 1890s. New laws forced many businesses either to provide separate facilities for black customers or to deny service to African American patrons altogether. Black entrepreneurs stepped in to establish operations in which African Americans could be served with courtesy and dignity.

The three main laws—with their extensive articles—that comprised South Carolina’s Black Codes addressed three general areas: new rights following abolition, new restrictions following abolition, and more specific decrees directed toward the labor issue. After four years of war, Republicans in Congress were not ready to accept a social, economic, and political return to the antebellum years. With the convening of Congress in December 1865, Republicans set out first to overturn the Black Codes; then to sweep away President Andrew Johnson, the South’s last defender; and finally to establish a new social, economic, and political order in the South.