Black History Month
We are honored to recognize the many South Carolinians who have contributed to our history and shaped our nation. Continue to check back this month as we feature more South Carolinians each week.
Septima Clark
Septima Clark was one of the most passionate educators of her time. She served as Director of Education and Teaching for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference teaching the youth the value of education.
Clark also worked with the YWCA and participated in a class action lawsuit filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that led to pay equity for black and white teachers in South Carolina.
In 1956, she began conducting workshops at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, a grassroots education center dedicated to social justice. Rosa Parks participated in one of Clark’s workshops just months before she helped launch the Montgomery bus boycott.
Ernest Finney Jr.
Ernest Finney Jr. was South Carolina’s first black state Supreme Court Chief Justice. He graduated from South Carolina State College’s School Law in 1954 and went on to fight for African-American rights throughout the civil rights movement. Finney represented the Friendship 9 in 1961. The 9 students were arrested for protesting a segregated lunch counter in Rock Hill. The students were among the first to adopt the “Jail, No Bail” movement, where they chose to go to jail rather than pay to an unfair justice system.
The following year, Finley served as the chairman of the South Carolina Commission on Civil Rights. He later was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune, once Vice President of the NAACP, was one of the most influential civil and women’s rights leaders, government officials and black educators of the 20th Century.
Ms. McLeod founded a school for black women that eventually merged to create Bethune-Cookman College in 1929.
Charles Bolden
A US Marine Corps graduate, Vietnam veteran, and an astronaut with four space missions under his belt, Columbia native Charles Bolden was named by Barack Obama as NASA’s first African American Administrator in 2009.
While working as the Administrator for NASA, he continued the agency’s ambitious exploration projects, including the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012.
Chubby Checker
American singer Chubby Checker was born Ernest Evans on October 3, 1941, in Spring Gulley, South Carolina. As a dance movement, “The Twist” revolutionized popular culture by giving couples the freedom to break apart on the dance floor. An appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand launched Checker’s version of “The Twist” to the No. 1 Billboard spot in September 1960. In January 1962, it topped the chart again. With this formidable achievement, “The Twist” became the first and only 45 single to ever appear in the No. 1 spot in two different years.
