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Anna D. Kelly Papers, 1930s – 1999

Anna D. Kelly (1913-2007) is known for her efforts to connect Lowcountry African Americans with the Highlander Folk School, most notably recruiting Septima Clark. A graduate of the Avery Normal Institute in Charleston, South Carolina, Kelly was a charter member of the Avery Institute of African American History and Culture. She then played a crucial […]

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Bernice Robinson Papers, 1920-1989

The Bernice Robinson Papers, 1920-1989 provide information regarding Robinson’s role as a teacher and social activist for voter education, adult literacy, child development, and social work. Contents include biographical papers, writings and talks, correspondence, and affiliations. Biographical papers include transcripts of her oral history interview. Her correspondence includes letters from Guy and Candie Carawan, Andrew […]

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Cleveland L. Sellers, Jr. Papers, 1934-2003

Cleveland Sellers, Jr. (born 1944), an African American from Denmark, South Carolina, was a participant and leader of a variety of student, civil rights, leftist, and Pan African movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Sellers alone was indicted and convicted for inciting a riot during the Orangeburg Massacre, in which three students of South Carolina […]

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Colleton County Memorial Library Bookmobile Collection

The Colleton County Memorial Library has provided bookmobile service since 1937, started by Isabel Patterson Heaton and Elma S. Rogers.  The library continues to provide bookmobile service to rural areas and child care centers throughout the county. This collection features photographs, scrapbooks, newspaper articles from The Press and Standard, and a Library Week guest book. […]

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Esau Jenkins Papers, 1963-2003

Esau Jenkins (1910-1972) was born and raised on Johns Island, South Carolina. With very little formal education, he became a businessman and civil rights leader. Jenkins founded the Progressive Club in 1948, which encouraged local African Americans to register to vote, through the aid of Citizenship Schools, a topic he was educated in by his […]

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Eugene C. Hunt Papers, 1834 – 1994

Eugene C. Hunt graduated from the Avery Normal School and went on to Talladega College, where he received a Degree in English in 1940. He earned a Masters Degree in Theater from Northwestern University in 1954 and continued with postgraduate study in Speech and Education. Mr. Hunt taught English and Speech at Burke High School […]

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Gertrude Sanford Legendre Papers, 1836-2000

Gertrude Sanford Legendre (1902–2000) was an American socialite who served as an OSS operative during World War II. She was also a noted explorer, big-game hunter, environmentalist, and owner of Medway plantation in South Carolina. The collection includes scrapbooks of Gertrude’s travels and family life, loose photographs ranging in date from the mid to late […]

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J. Arthur Brown Papers, 1937 – 1988

J. Arthur Brown was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1914. After graduating from the Avery Institute in 1932 he continued his education at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, SC graduating in 1937. While at SCSC, Brown met his future wife MaeDe Esperanza Myers (1918-2012), marrying in 1940. The couple had three daughters: MaeDe […]

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Millicent E. Brown Papers, 1949 – 2003

Millicent Ellison Brown (b. 1948) is an educator and civil rights activist. Born in Charleston to MaeDe and J. Arthur Brown, local and state president of NAACP (1955-1965), Brown, in 1963, replaced her older sister Minerva as the primary plaintiff in a NAACP-sponsored lawsuit (Millicent Brown vs. Charleston County School District #20). The collection consists […]

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Septima P. Clark Papers, ca. 1910-ca. 1990

This collection contains material relating to the life and work of Septima P. Clark. The biographical papers include tributes, clippings, certificates, awards, family correspondence and transcripts of various oral history interviews in which Clark discusses her parents; husband; growing up and race relations in Charleston, South Carolina; her work in Citizenship Schools; her work at […]

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Transactions of the Huguenot Society of South Carolina Collection

The Huguenot Society of South Carolina was founded in Charleston in 1885 to preserve the memory of the French Protestants who fled Europe during the 1600s and 1700s, many of whom made their way to Colonial South Carolina. The Society’s founders resolved to “prepare for publication and distribution to members … such proceedings as they […]

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YWCA of Greater Charleston, Inc., Records, 1906 – 2007

The Young Women’s Christian Association of Greater Charleston, which originated in 1907, has served communities in Charleston and the Lowcountry area of South Carolina for over a century. Currently, the YWCA of Greater Charleston, Inc., strives to provide programs and services for all people and holds a mission to eliminate racism and to empower women. […]