Discovering African American History at the College of Charleston

A Reflection by Professor Emeritus Bernard Powers

CofC Historic Marker, Reverse Side As Professor Bernard Powers notes, this marker is itself historic – it’s the first time the College has recognized, in a very public way, its past as a white-only institution. This side of the marker reads, “Initially a private school, in 1837 the College became the first municipal college in the country. It resumed private operations in 1949 to avoid racial integration. The school was all-male until 1918 and integrated in 1967. It became a public institution again in 1970, overseen by the State of South Carolina. In 1972, the College established its first graduate program and formalized its status as a university in 1992.” Courtesy of the College of Charleston.

A state historical marker stands on George Street just outside of Cistern Yard. It was unveiled on Jan. 30, 2020, exactly 250 years after the Lieutenant Governor of colonial South Carolina proposed a college for Charleston.

With this marker and a number of research projects now underway, the College commits to telling a fuller story of its past. This state historical marker records the College’s accomplishments, but also its past exclusionary practices. These include the exclusion of women until 1918 and African Americans until 1967.

Below, historian Bernard Powers reflects on the African American experiences and contributions that are part of the College's history, some of which will be showcased on this website in the future. Powers is the director of College’s Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, which is spearheading this upcoming tour of African American history at the College and in the surrounding neighborhoods. .

Although it has often been said that "a picture is worth a thousand words," this has not been true for the College of Charleston. When one enters Porter’s Lodge and strolls through our much-photographed campus, little is revealed beyond its visual appeal. Unfortunately, there has been little on our grounds to convey the deep and complex history embedded in the buildings, the landscape and the surrounding neighborhood.

The College’s history is at the very heart of early American history. Early leaders played critical roles in the American Revolution; three signed the Declaration of Independence and three others helped write the Constitution. Revolutionary-era barracks were among the earliest buildings the College used, and fifty years later, it became the nation’s earliest municipal college.

Stories about the College’s connection to slavery and subsequent issues of race are not as well known, because they have seldom been fully told. Many would be surprised to learn how organically intertwined these issues have been with the history of our institution. For example, Bishop Robert Smith, the first president, was a large slaveholder who used his own enslaved people to perform work on the campus; the College accumulated a considerable debt to him in part because of this. This indebtedness even influenced the way the campus was developed in the early years. We also know that slave labor was used to construct Randolph Hall in the late 1820s.

During this same period, the student body included John C. Fremont, one of the College’s most famous alumni, later known for his explorations of the American West and the settlement of California. Ironically, in 1856 he became the first presidential candidate of the antislavery Republican Party. Unlike most College alumni and some faculty who fought during the Civil War, Fremont served on the opposite side as a Union Army officer.

Randolph Hall is one of many campus buildings with important African American histories. In the antebellum period, many free blacks lived within the neighborhood adjacent to the campus. Some owned property here in the antebellum era; for example, in 1844, a free woman of color, Sally Johnson, purchased the house on 2 Green Way. It was passed down through her descendants until the College purchased it in the 1970s. James Holloway, a free person of color, owned five properties on College Street on property that would be the heart of campus. Another building was constructed during the Reconstruction era for A.O. Jones, an African American who was clerk of the South Carolina House of Representatives. In the modern period, the birthplace of Septima Clark, the civil rights era leader, is on our current campus, at 105 Wentworth St. Clark was educated at the segregated Avery Normal Institute, which now houses the College's Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture.

The Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston and the 250th Anniversary Historical Documentation Committee are committed to exploring these aspects of the College’s story. While preparing for our 250th anniversary celebration, the College joined the Universities Studying Slavery Consortium, a group of over fifty universities studying their historical relationships to slavery and its legacy of race related issues in contemporary life. Various offices, departments and programs at the College are now systematically exploring our history and the way it intersects with that of the city, the state and the nation.

The Center for the Study of Slavery is developing an African American heritage trail, beginning on the campus and extending into the surrounding neighborhood and city. The sites will be physically marked and digitally accessible. They will be incorporated into in-person tours for prospective students and other visitors. They’ll also be linked to other African American sites identified by other Charleston history and preservation-oriented organizations. A connection to the International African American Museum, slated to open at the end of 2021, will be especially important for our work. Our efforts will lead to a series of tours that will be posted on this website. The first tour for the 250th anniversary is only the beginning of this long-term project. We will continue to add to and refine the online tours as our research efforts yield new information.

On Jan. 30, 2020, President Andrew Hsu and the Historical Documentation Committee unveiled this new and unprecedented historical marker. In his speech that day, the president said, “I’m proud of this marker because it does not hide the faults of our past. On the contrary, it directly confronts our faults while still celebrating some of our key milestones.” We are also proud of that marker, the first of many in which we celebrate the “pride” of our achievements and unflinchingly confront the “pain” of our history. It is only in this spirit that we can fully embrace our motto for the 250th anniversary: History. Made. Here. and our eternal motto: Wisdom itself is Liberty.

Audio

Audio version of this essay. The audio version of this essay was voiced by Joy Vandervort-Cobb, associate professor of theatre at the College of Charleston.

Images

CofC Historic Marker, Reverse Side As Professor Bernard Powers notes, this marker is itself historic – it’s the first time the College has recognized, in a very public way, its past as a white-only institution. This side of the marker reads, “Initially a private school, in 1837 the College became the first municipal college in the country. It resumed private operations in 1949 to avoid racial integration. The school was all-male until 1918 and integrated in 1967. It became a public institution again in 1970, overseen by the State of South Carolina. In 1972, the College established its first graduate program and formalized its status as a university in 1992.” Courtesy of the College of Charleston.

CofC Historic Marker, Front Side In its earliest years, the College consisted of a concept and a growing endowment. Legislation attempting to found a college was introduced in 1770, but was not passed until 1785. The marker states, “Founded in 1770 and chartered in 1785, the College of Charleston is the oldest college in S.C. and is among the oldest in the U.S. The Cistern Yard, representing the core of campus, has three buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Randolph Hall (circa 1830), Porter's Lodge (1851), and Towell Library (1856). Randolph Hall is one of the longest-serving academic buildings in the U.S.” Courtesy of the College of Charleston.

Professor Bernard Powers Bernard Powers, Professor Emeritus of History and director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, is the author of *Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885* and a co-author of *We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel*. He is the interim director of the International African American Museum in Charleston. Courtesy of the College of Charleston.

Inventory of Bishop Smith Estate At his death, Bishop Robert Smith, the first president of the College, was the legal owner and enslaver of over 200 human beings. Other donors, trustees, presidents, faculty members, and students were also slave traders, slave owners and proponents of the institution of slavery. Courtesy of College of Charleston Libraries, Special Collections.

Bishop Smith Ledger This ledger records loans Bishop Smith made to the College. He loaned the College funds for building materials and operating expenses, and he also “hired out” some of the people he enslaved to work on the College’s classroom building. Smith added the wages that were due to him, as owners of these workers, to the mounting debt the College owed him. When Smith died, his estate sought to collect the debt, which ultimately led to the sale of some of the original College lands. Courtesy of College of Charleston Libraries, Special Collections.

John C. Fremont John C. Fremont (1813-1890), explorer of the American West and anti-slavery Republican presidential candidate, was a student at the College of Charleston during his teenage years. Reportedly a brilliant student, he was expelled for poor attendance; in 1836 the College awarded him both an undergraduate and a master’s degree. While Fremont ran on the antislavery platform in 1856 and held individual African Americans in high esteem, he did not necessarily work for their equal rights. His leadership in the West also produced colossal human rights violations for Native Americans, including a well-documented and brutal massacre of hundreds of men, women, and children on the Sacramento River in 1846. Portrait by John Chester Buttre, Feb. 23, 1859. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Richard Holloway (circa 1776-1845) Richard Holloway was a free person of color from Maryland who settled in Charleston, learned carpentry, and in 1803 married and joined a society for free men of color, the Brown Fellowship Society. When the College sold off some of the “College Lands” in 1817, Holloway bought lot number 8, at the corner of Green and College streets. By the 1840s he owned five houses in a row on College Street, in addition to eight more properties nearby. This portrait was preserved in a scrapbook compiled by one if his grandsons, James Holloway (1849-1913). The scrapbook provides a nuanced view of the ways free persons of color navigated antebellum society and the practice of slave ownership. In some cases, this practice offered a way to protect enslaved family members or friends whom state laws would not allowed to be freed, while others were truly treated as property. The scrapbook is now available through the Lowcountry Digital Library. Courtesy of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture.

2 Green Way, 2020 This house was purchased in 1844 by a free woman of color, Sally Johnson. The house was passed down through Johnson’s descendants, the Bell family, until the College purchased it in the 1970s. Following this purchase, the College found an important historical document in the attic: a volume containing minutes of the Brown Fellowship Society, a benevolent organization for free people of color. Courtesy of the College of Charleston.

Septima Clark’s Birthplace Charlestonian Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987) was born at this location and educated at the Avery Institute a few blocks away. In 1956 Clark was fired from her job as a Charleston public school teacher because of her membership in the NAACP. Clark’s citizenship schools taught literacy skills to African Americans in an era when many states used literacy tests to prevent African Americans from registering to vote. Her activism was so successful and influential that Martin Luther King, Jr. called her “the mother of the movement” and brought her with him to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. This marker was erected May 3, 2018 (Clark’s 110th birthday) by students in the College of Charleston’s Teaching Fellows program. Courtesy of the College of Charleston.

Septima Clark Receives Honorary Degree, 1978 Clark stands beside Governor James Edwards on March 11, 1978, at the College of Charleston, where she was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters for forty years of work as an educator, civil rights leader and advocate for the underprivileged. Gov. Edwards, a 1950 College graduate, was named alumnus of the year. Avery Research Center, College of Charleston Libraries. Courtesy of College of Charleston Libraries, Special Collections.

Lucille Whipper in 1973 Lucille Whipper (second row, left) attends the dedication for Rutledge Rivers Residence Hall in 1973. Behind and slightly to the right of Whipper in the crowd is President Ted Stern. When Whipper sought admission the College in 1944 along with classmates at the Avery Normal Institute, all were denied admission because of their race. In 1972 President Stern hired Whipper as Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Human Relations at the College, where she developed the College’s first affirmative action plan. She helped to establish the Avery Research Center in 1985, the same year she became the first African American woman to represent Charleston County in the SC Statehouse. In 2020 the College awarded her a Founders’ Medal, noting, “Whipper’s passion for civil rights led to transformational changes not only at the College of Charleston, but throughout the State of South Carolina.” Courtesy of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture.

The Honorable Lucille Simmons Whipper and President Andrew Hsu The College presented Lucille Whipper with a Founders' Medal on January 30, 2020. The 92-year-old Whipper received a standing ovation during her acceptance of the medal, after urging the next generation to get involved if they see something that needs to be done: "Nobody invites you to act. You just do it." Whipper was the first African-American woman to represent Charleston County at the South Carolina Statehouse and was instrumental in establishing the College’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture. Courtesy of the College of Charleston.

Location

66 George St, Charleston, SC 29424

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Metadata

Citation Info

Bernard Powers, “Discovering African American History at the College of Charleston,” Discovering Our Past: College of Charleston Histories, accessed April 24, 2024, https://discovering.cofc.edu/items/show/14.

Published Feb 22, 2020. Last updated Jun 2, 2023.

Filed Under

African American