Charleston County

In Charleston in 1969 issues of race, class, and gender coalesced in a strike of more than four hundred African American hospital workers, mostly female, against the all-white administrations of the Medical College Hospital (MCH) and Charleston County Hospital (CCH).

The Works Progress Administration helped significantly in developing the facilities during the 1930s, and Charleston continued to run the airport until World War II.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, more and more cast-iron elements were used to embellish Charleston’s iron gates and fences. These mass-produced elements were created mainly in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and shipped south to satisfy the new demand for solid, lifelike replicas of flowers, leaves, and branches that were favored during the Victorian period.

Among the collections of the Charleston Library Society are rare books, pamphlets, a manuscript collection, and the society’s records. The most significant collection is the society’s newspaper files, which contain the world’s largest and most complete collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century Charleston newspapers.

Although begun as a literary journal, the Charleston Mercury developed into one of the state’s most radical and combative newspapers.

Founded in 1773, the Charleston Museum is the oldest municipal museum in the United States. It originated as an auxiliary of the Charleston Library Society dedicated to the collection, preservation, and study of “materials promoting a Natural History” of South Carolina.

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Charleston Naval Shipyard remained instrumental in the navy’s nuclear submarine program. After 1990 the lowcountry facility became less important.

In 1790 the city council established the Charleston Orphan House “for the purpose of supporting and educating poor orphan children, and those of poor, distressed and disabled parents who are unable to support and maintain them.” It was the first public orphanage in America.

Envisioned as an advance in the humane treatment of the sick and uplift of the deserving poor, the Charleston Poorhouse and Hospital was intended to serve as an infirmary for the physically and mentally ill and to provide shelter, food, and reform for the needy.

Through words, melodies, pictures, and even a dance step, the idea of Charleston was broadcast across the nation.

The activism and aggression against whites displayed by Charleston blacks set that city apart from others in the South during Reconstruction.

The clashes were in large measure due to white fears over a newfound assertiveness demonstrated by the black servicemen returning from World War I, and paralleled the hysterical antiforeign, antiradical “Red Scare” of 1919 and 1920.

The typical single house stands two or more stories in height and is built on a rectangular plan with its narrow end facing the street.

Charleston Southern has built on its mission, “promoting academic excellence in a Christian environment,” by offering more than thirty undergraduate and graduate degree programs, thirty-five student organizations, and eighteen National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I athletic teams.

Charleston Tea Plantation produces the only tea grown in the United States on Wadmalaw Island, thirty miles south of Charleston.

Though a continuous enemy presence off Charleston was maintained by the Federals from May 28, 1861, when the Union navy established its blockade, Charleston did not find itself under constant attack until July 1863.

The siege of Charleston marked the commencement of major British operations in the South during the Revolutionary War.

Cheves declined an offer to join President James Madison’s cabinet as secretary of the treasury, and he retired from Congress in 1815. In 1819 President James Monroe appointed Cheves president of the Second National Bank of the United States.

In addition to this major contribution to the Confederate war effort, Chisolm devised a more efficient inhaler for the administration of chloroform, an anesthetic that was in short supply in the Confederate army.

The organization’s motto was “conversation, not conversion,” and its objectives focused on education and cooperation. It sought to correct misunderstandings between the faith communities, especially forms of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism that occasionally surfaced in communities across the state.