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"Black" Seventh District

The segregation of black voters into the “Black” Seventh, as it came to be known, had the desired effect. The Democrats did not even field a candidate in that district in 1882, and a white Republican, Edmund Mackey, won the election. In 1886, however, Democrats began to contest the seat. The former slave and Republican George Washington Murray won in 1896 but lost in the following election. He was the last African American to represent South Carolina in Congress for nearly a century.

Baha'is

Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings were brought to South Carolina by the son of a slave, Louis G. Gregory (1874–1951), a native of Charleston and a 1902 graduate of Howard University Law School. Becoming a confirmed believer in the Baha’i faith in 1909, he made his first teaching trip to Charleston and seven other southern cities the following year. Gregory grew to international prominence in the Baha’i faith; thus the eponym of the Louis G. Gregory Baha’i Institute and radio station WLGI in Hemingway.

Baldwin, William Plews, III

Baldwin's first novel, The Hard to Catch Mercy (1993), was universally well received, winning the Lillian Smith Award for Fiction and becoming a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. He has also published four nonfiction books with the photographer Jane Iseley about historic Charleston and the plantations of the lowcountry. He has published two oral history reports featuring Mrs. Emily Whaley (1913–1998), grande dame of Charleston society, and her recollections of her garden, cuisine, recipes, and entertaining.

Baptists

Baptists are by far the largest religious group in South Carolina, and in many ways they are the most diverse. They are black and white, Asian and Hispanic, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, and liberal and conservative in their politics, their social views, and their theology. As different as Baptist groups or even churches within a group may be from each other, almost all Baptists share a commitment to believers’ baptism by immersion, the Bible as the primary source of faith, and a congregational church polity.

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