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 […]
Founded in 1865, the Avery Normal Institute provided education and advocacy for the growing Charleston African American community and trained blacks for professional careers and leadership roles. Although the Institute closed its doors in 1954, it graduates preserved the legacy of their alma mater by establishing the Avery Institute of Afro-American History and Culture. This […]
The Avery Research Center houses a variety of oral history interviews, largely documenting African American experiences in the Lowcountry. Oral history projects include the Avery Normal Institute documentation effort and the Sea Island Preservation Initiative.
The Avery Sweetgrass Basket Collection holds significant modern examples of a centuries-old craft. Following African traditions, baskets of coiled grasses were originally produced by slaves on Lowcountry plantations for agricultural use. Over time, sweetgrass baskets have become artistic expressions that retain the African aesthetic — a symbol of African American culture and a signature of […]
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 […]
The Book Lover’s Club of Charleston was founded in 1927 by African American Women as a literary club with a purpose of establishing a high literary culture among its members as well as social improvement for Charleston African Americans. Legal documents, minutes, financial documents, and correspondence (1927-1969) document the activities of the Book Lovers’ Club […]
Carlton Simmons (1959-) began his apprenticeship with uncle Philip Simmons at the age of 13. Today he is less known for utilitarian ironwork, but his decorative and artistic pieces are highly sought-after.
The Catherine and James Yatsco Collection contains artifacts collected in West Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. During 1971-1973, Captain James C. Yatsco was stationed in Monrovia, Liberia, under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where he helped manage the pharmacy in a newly-built hospital. Catherine Yatsco taught high school English to a […]
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was started on February 12, 1909, partly in response to the prevalence of lynching of African-Americans in America and the 1908 race riot that occurred in Springfield, Illinois. The Charleston Branch of the NAACP was founded in February 1917 by Edwin Harleston. The branch was […]
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 […]
The collection of artifacts pertaining tot he Craft and Crum families of the Lowcountry includes a myriad of materials; photo albums, letters, account books, and land deeds. The Craft Family Photo Album includes images of Craft family members, famous abolitionists, and other family friends, many of international historical significance. Also included in the collection are […]
Dr. Elizabeth Clarice Hall (1946-2005) was born in Albany, Georgia. She earned a B.S. in Biology from Ursinus College in 1968, then an M.S. and Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Florida State University in 1971 and 1973. The artifacts in this collection were assembled from Dr. Hall’s various trips to Africa.
The Edwin A. Harleston collection contains three original paintings by African American artist and community activist Edwin “Teddy” Harleston (1882-1931) of Charleston, South Carolina. The pieces are representative of the early twentieth-century artists famous portraits and landscapes of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Edwin A. “Teddy” Harleston (1882-1931) was an African American artist and community activist […]
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 […]
Ethelyn Murray was a native of Charleston SC and attended Simonton School and the Avery Normal Institute, graduating in 1914. She taught in several counties in South Carolina before enrolling at Voorhees Institute in 1918, studying religious and elementary education. In 1920, she relocated to Mobile, AL, teaching for five years. She received a Rosenwald […]
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 […]
The Friendly Moralist Society was a benevolent society for free brown (mulatto or mixed race) men established in Charleston, S.C. in 1838. This collection contains proceedings of their monthly meetings from 1841 to 1856, and the Absentee Book, showing member absent and for what reason, from 1842 to 1849. The Proceedings section consists of minutes […]
In 2008, Curtis J. Franks travelled to West Africa as a participant in the Fulbright-Hays program under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education to explore historical and cultural connections between people of African descent in the Lowcountry and Africans in the Mano River Region (Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast), where […]
The George Pope collection contains Nigerian artifacts acquired while Mr. Pope, former U.S. State Department employee, was stationed in the country. Nike Olaniyi [Okundaye] Davies (1951- ) is an internationally known artist and textile designer from Nigeria. She founded and runs the Nike Center for Art and Culture in Oshogbo [Osogbo], Nigeria, which offers art […]
Glendia Cooper, African American potter, grew up in Mississsippi and has exhibited her work in various cities across the United States. Her pieces, inspired by travel in Africa and South America, are created using the coil and slab methods, then shaping, molding, decorating and glazing by hand.
The Herbert A. DeCosta, Jr. Papers include materials related to the professional and personal life of Herbert DeCosta, Jr., his wife Emily, and numerous Craft, Crum, and DeCosta family members. Namely, the walking cane of Dr. William Crum.
Helen Evangeline Banks Harrison was born in Hampton, Virginia in 1898 and is the daughter of Issiah and Anna DeCosta Banks, came to Charleston, South Carolina as a child and spent most of her life there. She attended city schools, Avery Normal Institute, and Howard University. In 1935, she began working as a clerk in […]
This collection containes a scrapbook, compiled by James H. Holloway (1849-1913), which contains legal documents, personal and business correspondence, receipts, ephemera, clippings and photographs pertaining to the Holloway family, a prominent free family of color in Charleston, SC. Legal documents include deeds (1806, 1821, 1871), a conveyance (1811), slave bills of sale including one for […]
Isaiah Bennett (1926-2002) served as a union representative for tobacco workers at the American Tobacco Company’s “Cigar Factory” and as a leader and negotiator of the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike of 1969. Bennett also founded and was president of the Charleston chapter of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, an umbrella organization for black trade unions. […]
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 […]
The digitized portion of the James E. Campbell papers consists of 107 posters that were collected by Campbell throughout his life. Campbell (1925-2021) was a native of Charleston, South Carolina and went on to become a revolutionary organizer, activist and educator. He worked alongside notable figures such as Amiri Baraka, Jack O’Dell, and Malcolm X, […]
The Johannah Gold collection contains objects from Mrs. Gold’s family relating to the history of farming in the Lowcountry.
African American anthropologist Joseph Allen Towles (1937-1988) met British anthropologist Colin Macmillan Turnbull (1924-1994) in 1959. The two exchanged marriage vows in 1960 and they lived together in an interracial, homosexual relationship until Towles’ death in 1988. Towles and Turnbull spent various periods of time in Africa, conducting fieldwork on the Mbuti, Mbo, and Ik […]
The Coards Studio was a photography studio owned and operated by Joseph and Rachel Coards in Charleston, South Carolina. Coards photographed African American families and individuals in the studio and various events and groups outside of the studio, such as graduations, weddings, and other ceremonies. The studio, located at 78 Line Street, closed in the […]
The Katherine Nicklaus Collection contains two female carved wooden masks whose origin was the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly known as Zaire).
The Keith and Charlotte Otterbein collection contains straw objects obtained while doing ethnographic work in Nassau, Bahamas between 1959 and 1987. Many of the items in this collection were made by individual Bahamian craftswomen (also called “plaiters”) who maintained their independence in the straw industry, while four were sold in the Nassau straw market, thus […]
The Leo S. Carty Watercolor Print collection contains nine signed and number prints by Leo S. Carty (1931-2010). The primary focus of Carty’s paintings are the daily life of blacks in the Virgin Islands at the turn of the 20th century. Leo S. Carty (1931-2010) was born in Harlem, New York on April 17, 1931. […]
Donated by Dr. Lois Fries, these artifacts were collected in the early 1920s by Reverend Robert and Jennie Oberly. The Reverend and his wife were missionaries to Liberia for the United Lutheran Church.
Cast net fishing is a significant part of history in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Africans transported to the Lowcountry, later known as the Gullah people, brought with them skills in boating and fishing. Seafood was plentiful on the South Carolina coast and barrier islands (sea islands) and made up a large part of the diet, […]
Mamie Elizabeth Garvin (1888-1987) was born to Rebecca Mary Logan Bellinger and George Washington Garvin, in Charleston, South Carolina. Garvin became one of the first African American teachers hired to teach in the county’s public schools. In addition to teaching children, Fields was a pioneer in concept of children’s daycare facilities, adult education, organizing classes […]
The Marie Metz Collection is comprised of three objects; a mantel clock, a xylophone, and a clock topper. The mantel clock has metal legs with markings that indicate that the clock was made in New York. The square xylophone has five plates, each producing a different tone. The clock topper is an ornamental figurine that […]
The McLeod Plantation Cemetery Collection contains beads found in 1996 during the construction of a fire station in James Island, South Carolina. Construction of the fire station, which was to be located between Folly Road, Country Club Drive, and Wappoo Creek, was aborted when workers unearthed unmarked graves. The human bones found were believed to […]
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 […]
This collection includes correspondence, certificates, photographs, and other materials related to Miriam DeCosta Seabrook’s education at Avery Institute and elsewhere, teaching career, and civic involvement; correspondence, speeches, and reports related to Dr. Herbert Seabrook, Sr.’s community and fraternal affiliations and to his medical career as a private practitioner and director of the Hospital and Training […]
The Muriel and Marcus Zbar Collection was donated by Dr. Marcus J. Zbar, a 1951 graduate of Vanderbilt University. The collection consists of artifacts originating in West and Central Africa and Papua New Guinea that Dr. Zbar privately purchased from various galleries across the United States.
The Pan-African Art and Artifact Collection contains objects anonymously donated to the Avery Research Center that portray art and life among peoples of African descent across the world.
The Paul Craven, Jr. Collection is comprised of artifacts of Togo origin. The artifacts include wooden figurines, instruments, spears, household items, and woven straw fans adorned with the flag of Togo.
Philip Simmons (1912-2009) was an African American blacksmith and artisan specializing in the craft of ironwork in Charleston, South Carolina. Simmons spent seventy-seven years crafting utilitarian and ornamental ironwork. His work is recognized within the state of South Carolina, nationally, and internationally. This collection, donated by the Philip Simmons Foundation, holds personal papers with photographs […]
The Phillis Wheatley Literary and Social Club was formed in 1916 under the direction of Jeannette Cox, wife of Avery Normal Institute principal Benjamin Cox. The club consisted of nineteen women members meeting to discuss literary works by such authors as W.E.B DuBois, Carter G. Woodson and others. The club women also helped fulfill their […]
The Rogers-Cline Collection is comprised of two cast iron kitchenwares; a kettle and a cook pot. The cast iron kettle has a wire handle, the lid is imprinted “ROME GA SO -CO – OP F’DY – CO” (Southern Cooperative Foundry Company; Rome, Georgia). The six-gallon iron cook pot has two bail handles.
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 […]
The “Somebody Had to Do It” project is a multidisciplinary research project documenting the experience of the first African American children to attend formerly all-White schools through video oral histories. The Project takes its name from the often-stated response of the no longer young activists who stepped forward, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to […]
Historically known as “The Walter Pantovic Slavery Collection,” these artifacts span the African American experience from slavery to the Civil Rights era to the rise of African Americans in popular culture. Walter Pantovic was born in Yugoslavia in 1965 and immigrated to the United States at the age of two. He became interested in African-American […]
The Walter Pantovic Slavery and African American History Collection contains documents and images that reflect African American history primarily in the United States. Walter Pantovic was a Yugoslavian immigrant with an interest in Black history, in particular the history of Slavery and the Civil War. Highlights from this collection include slave bills of sale, glass […]
William (“Bill”) Saunders, a community and Civil Rights activist in Charleston, South Carolina, was an organizer and lead negotiator of the Charleston Hospital Strike of 1969. In 1970, Saunders established the Committee on Better Racial Assurance (COBRA) to address race-related community problems and provide assistance to community members in need. He also operated the AM […]
The William McCarthy and Martin Barbeau Collection is comprised of artifacts from various origin. The objects are primarily decorative currency, such as bracelets and anklets. Places of origin include Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Nigeria, Togo, Zambia, Niger, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, and Ghana.
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. […]