https://charleston.edu/commemoration-landscapes/, http://linktr.ee/cclcofc

Committee on Commemoration & Landscapes CofC, 64 George St, Charleston, SC (2026)

09/16/2025

In 1950, Charlestonians were stunned when Elizabeth Waring, an affluent white woman, spoke at the Coming Street YWCA denouncing segregation. Waring and her husband, Judge Julius Waring, were already despised by whites for a series of desegregationist court decisions, but Septima Clark urged her to give the speech despite pressure to cancel. Waring told the audience that whites were “sick, confused, and decadent,” urging Blacks to vote and fight for rights. The speech deepened white hostility but drew Clark and the Warings into friendship, crossing color lines by dining in each other’s homes. Under threat, the Warings left Charleston in 1952 but remained allies.

Meanwhile, Clark expanded her community leadership. She taught at Archer Elementary, led the local chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, and as Coming Street YWCA chair, connected Charleston activists to wider struggles. She attended the Highlander Folk School in 1954 and was struck by its integrated workshops. She soon led Highlander programs, where local leaders Esau Jenkins and Bernice Robinson planned a Johns Island citizenship school to teach literacy and civic skills, later a model for others across the South.

Resistance grew after Brown v. Board (1954). Klan chapters swelled, and Citizens’ Councils formed to defend segregation. In 1956, South Carolina barred public employees from the NAACP. Most Black teachers withdrew from the NAACP, but Clark refused to withdraw and was fired. That year Highlander hired her full-time, and despite Tennessee state efforts to shut it down, Clark continued her work.

Read more on the Discovering Our Past website on the ‘Allies: Crossing the Color Line with Septima Clark, 1947-1956’ story.

📸: Discovering Our Past. 1) Coming St. YWCA, c. 1950s 2) Septima Clark, c. 1950s 3) Septima Clark and Rosa Parks, Highlander Folk School, 1955

09/12/2025

Purchasing a house on Henrietta Street in 1948 fulfilled a lifelong dream for fifty-year-old Septima Clark, who since childhood had wanted to give her parents a more comfortable life. It would have been an impossible dream, however, without 1940s court rulings that forced South Carolina to equalize Black teachers’ pay with white teachers’. While in Columbia, Clark joined the equalization fight, which ultimately tripled her salary.

Before that, she supplemented income by teaching evening classes, gaining skill with adult learners in Richland County’s Adult Schools and at Fort Jackson, where she taught Black soldiers. She also grew through the Palmetto State Teachers’ Association, which stressed civic responsibility. “We teachers had a visible demonstration of our importance,” she later recalled, “it didn’t take much to imagine what we might be.” Unlike cautious colleagues, Clark eagerly recruited NAACP members, gathering affidavits on pay disparities.

In 1943 the NAACP sued the Charleston school board; Judge J. Waties Waring ordered salaries equalized. In 1945 he did the same in Richland County, prompting a state exam requirement. Many Black teachers feared the test, but Clark’s degrees and training helped her score high, tripling her salary.

With that income she bought and renovated the Henrietta Street home, adding a bedroom and bath for her mother. “The night we had the opening, she was most jubilant…She threw her arms around me and said, ‘Nice, nice to do this.’” Clark added, “She was too happy, but I was hoping my father could have been alive.”

Read more on the Discovering Our Past website on the ‘Activism: Pay Equalization and Septima Clark’s Home, 1929-48’ story.

📸: Discovering Our Past. 1) Clark’s house at 17 Henrietta St. 2) Site of 17 Henrietta St, now parking for Emanuel AME 3) 1944 Charleston Evening Post article on NAACP’s suit against Charleston County 4) 1945 Charleston Evening Post article on NAACP’s suit against Richland County

09/08/2025

We meet once a month. First meeting of the semester tomorrow!

09/05/2025

On this day in history….

On September 5, 1959, the News & Courier reported the upcoming demolition of Zion Presbyterian Church.

Zion Presbyterian Church, once a cornerstone of Charleston’s Black community, stood at the intersection of Meeting and Calhoun. It was one of the most important churches within the African American community in Charleston. The church began when enslaved people, relegated to the “galleries” of Second Presbyterian, were taught separately by John Bailey Adger, who claimed they could not understand regular services. By 1850, the enslaved congregation worshipped at the Anson Street Mission. Under John L. Girardeau, they secured 123 Calhoun Street, where Zion was built in 1858. Costing $25,000 and with a congregation of nearly 1,500, it was Charleston’s largest church. By 1859, services were so crowded that many were turned away.

Zion quickly became a community center for celebration, education, and civil rights. After the Civil War, thousands gathered there to celebrate emancipation. Black Methodists debating independence from white churches met, not in Methodist sanctuaries, but at Zion. In November 1865, when Black men were denied suffrage, the Colored People’s Convention for South Carolina met at Zion, protesting the Black Codes.

The church also advanced education: Rev. Jonathan C. Gibbs founded Wallingford Academy there in 1865, and Avery Institute held graduations in its sanctuary.

Though Zion struggled financially in the 1930s, it was restored in 1945 under Rev. S.D. Thom. But in 1959, it merged with Olivet Presbyterian, and in 1960 the city demolished Zion. Where once stood a landmark of Black faith, education, and activism, a community lost part of its history.

Read more on the Discovering Our Past website on the ‘Zion Presbyterian Church, 123 Calhoun Street’ story.

📸: Discovering Our Past. 1) News & Courier article, Sept. 5, 1959 2) Historic marker now at 123 Calhoun

09/03/2025

In her twenties and thirties, successful teacher Septima Poinsette Clark experienced several difficulties and setbacks. In 1920, against her mother’s wishes, she married Navy sailor Nerie Clark. Their first child, Victoria, lived only 23 days. “I felt sure it was my sin that caused that. I had disobeyed my mother, and I thought that’s why this baby didn’t live. I went down on the Battery and thought so much about drowning myself.” Her brother found her and brought her home. Later, in Dayton, Ohio, she bore a son, Nerie Jr., but discovered her husband’s infidelity. Soon after, he died of kidney disease. “I took his body home for burial and pieced together all the sweet notes he had written me, so the minister could help the family feel good. The casket lay in his mother’s living room, and his ten-month-old son…swung on the handles as if it were a toy.”

Determined to support her son, she resumed teaching in 1927 at Promise Land School, then moved to Columbia in 1929 for higher pay. There she taught in overcrowded schools while attending college courses. “I taught from twelve o’clock till five…and in the mornings I could take two or three classes…and at night I could take two or three more.” She earned a B.A. from Benedict College in 1942 and an M.A. from Hampton Institute in 1946. A course with W. E. B. Du Bois left a mark; after she described a Black mother forced to tell her son he could not sit at the front of a streetcar, Du Bois told the class, “There will come a time when this will be changed.”

By 1947 her salary had risen to nearly $4,000. After her mother suffered a stroke, Clark began to return to Charleston each weekend. She was forced to ride segregated buses. “No matter how long the trip you could never use a bathroom. I said to myself, ‘Now, we’ve got to do something about these things,’ and that’s what I did for the next twenty-four years.’”

Read more on the Discovering Our Past website on the ‘Overcoming: Septima Clark Meets Personal Challenges, 1920-47’ story.

📸: Discovering Our Past. 1) Nerie Clark and Septima Poinsette, 1919 2) Nerie Clark, Jr., 1936 3) Segregated bus station in North Carolina, 1940

09/01/2025

Septima Poinsette entered Avery Normal Institute in 1912 and graduated six years later, already teaching, supporting her family, and engaging in politics. She had limited opportunities under South Carolina’s racist laws, but Avery expanded her education, earning power, and sense of purpose. Founded after the Civil War to train Black teachers, Avery offered a rigorous liberal arts curriculum, devoted teachers, and extracurriculars like plays and the yearbook. To pay tuition, Septima babysat and raised money through her church.

Avery’s students often came from elite Black families. Septima, the daughter of a washerwoman and a formerly enslaved man, felt looked down upon. Teachers visited Septima’s home and urged her to attend Fisk University, but tuition was beyond her family’s means. At 18 she began teaching. Since Charleston barred Black teachers from its public schools, her first job was at Promise Land School on Johns Island. There, she taught more than 100 children for $35 a month, while nearby a white teacher with three students earned $85. Despite poor pay and irregular attendance, “Miss Seppie” created a PTA, taught sewing, helped in gardens, and assisted illiterate neighbors.

After two years, she returned to Avery as a teacher in 1918–19 and joined the newly formed Charleston NAACP. Amid the racial violence of 1919’s “Red Summer,” she helped the NAACP petition the city to hire Black teachers, going door-to-door on Calhoun Street. By then, Septima Poinsette had become not only a teacher but a determined advocate for better schools and rights for all Black Charlestonians.

Read more on the Discovering Our Past website on the ‘Education: Septima Poinsette Finds Her Calling, 1912-1919’ story.

📸: Discovering Our Past. 1) Avery Normal Institute, 1900 2) Avery Research Center for African American Culture 3) Promised Land School, 1954 4) Septima Clark teaching Johns Island, 1919 5) NAACP Petition Clipping, 1919

08/28/2025

Septima Poinsette was born in 1898 at 105 Wentworth Street, when Black Charlestonians had few rights or opportunities. Reconstruction (1865–1877) had briefly extended voting rights and public schools, but by 1895 South Carolina’s constitution barred Black voters and mandated segregation. Despite these limits, Septima’s parents, Peter and Victoria Poinsette, built full lives with support from Black schools, churches, clubs, and neighborhoods.

Family history was partly lost. Clark’s father was likely born in the 1840s near Georgetown and was the son of an enslaved woman who died young. He grew up enslaved by the Poinsett family and, like most Black South Carolinians, was illiterate. Victoria was born in Charleston in 1870. She spent part of her youth in Haiti, gaining education that shaped her pride. She worked from home as a laundress and was active in church and women’s clubs. Peter worked as a waiter, caterer, custodian, and briefly as a restaurant owner. Their children attended multiple Black congregations, including Old Bethel and Emanuel AME.
In 1904 the family moved to Henrietta Street. The children hauled water, helped with laundry, and joined Sunday walks. Mrs. Poinsette enforced discipline and self-respect; her husband, more gentle, cooked and taught honesty, humility, and seeing “something fine and noble in everybody.” Clark later said she inherited both her mother’s courage and her father’s nonviolence.

Both parents stressed education. Mrs. Poinsette oversaw lessons, arranged music study, and sometimes enrolled her children in small private schools. Septima also attended segregated public schools, including Charleston Colored Industrial (now Burke High), which ended at 8th grade. With no public high schools for Black youth, she entered Avery Normal Institute in 1912, a private school for training Black teachers—well on her way to achieving more than her parents had been allowed to do.

Read more on the Discovering Our Past website on the ‘Inheritance: Septima Poinsette Clark’s Family, 1850s-1910s’ story.

📸: Discovering Our Past. 1) 105 Wentworth St., 2018 2) 105 Wentworth St., 1872 3) Victoria Poinsette

08/25/2025

Did you know? The CCL offers an "Untold Stories" walking tour, which highlights many groups who were not originally part of the College of Charleston, but whose presence has enriched our communities and whose activism has helped the College become a more inclusive and welcoming university. Offered periodically throughout the semester, "Untold Stories" tours also feature student interpretation at certain sites.

If you can't make a tour, the CofC: Discovering Our Past mobile app features essays on many of the sites visited during the tour.

Visit the link in the bio to check our next tour dates, and email [email protected] or [email protected] to sign up to be a student interpreter!

08/23/2025

Formed in 2020, the Committee on Commemoration and Landscapes shares the history of the College of Charleston and the lands and historic structures on our campus. President Andrew T. Hsu, the 23rd president of the College of Charleston, has charged our committee with creating interpretive signage that presents complete and accurate information about the College of Charleston, and that communicated our commitment to truth-telling and our 21st-century values of respect for the individual.

We explore the diverse communities that have lived in our neighborhood in the past. We tell their stories through exterior signage, interpretive panels in interior campus spaces, online essays, and in-person experiences such as walking tours of our campus.

To contribute, please email [email protected] or [email protected].

08/21/2025

Today a popular outdoor workspace for students, the site of 63 ½ Coming Street has had a long and varied history. Over the two hundred and twenty four traceable years of this site’s history, it has served as a slave quarter, a kitchen operated by enslaved people, a rental space, home to a business, and now a comfortable study area.

The varying purposes for 63 ½ Coming were made evident in the spring of 2021, when the College’s Archaeology department excavated the space to make room for a new solar pavilion. Students unearthed architectural remains dating back to the mid-1800s, and found artifacts from as early as the 1720s, some 60 years before the College’s chartering in 1785. Among those artifacts were a slave tag from 1853, which enslaved people had to carry in order to move freely about Charleston, along with pieces of ceramics and food remnants.

The artifacts are remnants of the complex and varied lives that African Americans have lived in Charleston, and serve as reminders of how much Charleston once relied on enslaved people and their sacrifices.

The completed solar pavilion was officially unveiled in October of 2021, when it was dedicated to the Indigenous and enslaved people who have lived and worked at 63 ½ Coming for centuries. For more information, please visit the Discovering Our Past essay linked in our bio.

Photos: Solar Pavilion, 1876 Bird’s eye view of the intersection of Coming and Bull Streets, Students helping with preparations for the excavation of the site, Excavated brick remnants or buildings

Committee on Commemoration & Landscapes CofC

09/16/2025

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