Business and Industry

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.”

In 1928 Billings succeeded Henry Cabot Lodge II as the Washington, D.C., correspondent for Time, a weekly news-magazine. Three years later he assumed the managing editorship of Life, a new weekly pictorial magazine. The eight years in that position were considered the most noteworthy of his journalistic career.

Aside from its role as the seat of Lee County government, Bishopville has also served as a business and cultural center throughout its existence.

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.

Prior to the Civil War, Blackville prospered as a cotton reception point, which stimulated the development of a bustling mercantile community. The final decades of the twentieth century found Blackville struggling to maintain its position of economic importance within Barnwell County. In 1979 more than one-fifth of Blackville families lived below the poverty line, and the removal of the town’s railroad line in the late 1980s further added to difficulties.

Perhaps the greatest crisis of Blackwood’s administration occurred during the General Textile Strike of September 1934, when half of the state’s textile workforce went on strike to protest wage cuts and poor working conditions. Blackwood called out the National Guard and empowered “constables without compensation” to patrol mill villages. On September 6 several “constables” fired on striking workers at Honea Path, killing seven and wounding fourteen.

Blair joined NBC-TV in 1950 and moderated “The American Forum of the Air,” a debate program. He was named Washington, D.C., correspondent for “The Today Show,” which was launched on January 14, 1952, as an experimental morning news program. The innovative enterprise eventually won acclaim with Dave Garroway and Jack Lescoulie as hosts and Blair as newscaster. Blair worked with twenty-five hosts during his twenty-three years on the show.

In 1935 he was elected Speaker Pro Tem of the S.C. House of Representatives. Two years later he was chosen Speaker of the House. He held this position from 1937 to 1973 with the exception of the period from 1947 to 1951, when he did not oppose Governor Strom Thurmond’s candidate for Speaker, C. Bruce Littlejohn. In 1951 Blatt was reelected Speaker of the House by a vote of 113 to 9. He held the position until stepping down in 1973.

As governor, Blease emphasized individual freedom for whites and racism. He opposed government regulation, even if its purpose was to benefit the same mill workers to whom he appealed. He denounced an act to limit working hours for mill employees, believing it interfered with parents’ control over their children. He vetoed legislation to inspect factories for safety and health considerations, stating that a man ought to be able to work under any conditions he chose. He opposed compulsory education as an attempt to replace parents with “the paid agents of the State in the control of children,” and he vetoed four compulsory attendance bills while governor.

Until 1993 Blenheim Bottling Company avoided any attempts at modernization. Each bottle was taken off the production line and hand-shaken to mix the granulated sugar into the ale. That laborious process ended when Alan Schafer, proprietor of the South of the Border entertainment complex located just south of the North Carolina state line, bought out the bottler and built a modern plant. The spicy ale has developed a cult following among food and wine aficionados.

Charleston served as the Confederacy’s main port from November 1861 to July 1863. During this time some thirty-six steam-powered blockade-runners made 125 trips in and out of Charleston, carrying out nearly 30,000 bales of cotton. The majority of the ships operated out of Nassau, although some came from Havana and Bermuda. Primarily private companies used Charleston, while Wilmington, North Carolina, was home to the government’s blockade-runners.

The state is famed for Winnsboro blue granite, which was quarried for many years in Fairfield County. The stone is of light blue color and contains particles of mica, feldspar, and quartz. It is much prized in construction and decoration.

Primarily supported by Charleston merchants and built by Irish and German immigrants and local slaves, the Blue Ridge Railroad was intended to return the port city to commercial prominence in the region. Funding was problematic, however, with investors outside of Charleston displaying little interest in the project. Only a massive infusion of state funds in the mid-1850s kept the Blue Ridge Railroad alive, but it was not enough to complete the line.

Located on the twenty-foot-high bluffs of the May River and facing the cool, southerly winds, it was an ideal summer refuge for planter families. The town, known first simply as May River and then later as Kirk’s Bluff, was officially named Bluffton in 1844. The development of Hilton Head as a major tourist destination in the early 1970s marked a revitalization of Bluffton. Annexations and the spread of Hilton Head’s resort and tourism economy led to a seventy-five percent increase in Bluffton’s population during the 1990s.

Spartanburg County won a major recruiting battle over BMW’s first non-Bavarian factory on June 23, 1992, when the company chose Greer over approximately 250 other localities around the world. BMW’s decision was hailed both locally and internationally as the crowning achievement of the South Carolina Piedmont’s campaign for international industrial recruitment.

The national trend toward improving waterways and other public facilities led South Carolina to create the Board of Public Works in December 1819. The enabling legislation created a five-person board headed by two paid acting commissioners.

Bolden is a veteran of four space flights. In January 1986 he served as part of the crew of the space shuttle Columbia, which deployed the SATCOM KU satellite, and performed experiments in astrophysics and materials processing. Four years later, in April 1990, Bolden piloted the space shuttle Discovery, whose crew deployed the Hubble Space Telescope.

The genesis of Boonesborough Township lay in the 1761 petition of John Pouag, the Reverend John Baxter, John Greg, John Rae, and David Rae for a grant of forty thousand acres to be reserved for the settlement of Irish immigrants. Pouag and Greg were merchants of Charleston and London, respectively, while Baxter had brought settlers from Belfast to Williamsburg Township.