Counties

Originally a lawsuit filed by twenty African American parents in Clarendon County for equal educational opportunities for their children, Briggs v. Elliott was the first case in the twentieth century to challenge the constitutionality of racially segregated schools. The case carries the names of the lead plaintiff, Harry Briggs, who had five children in the school district, and Roderick W. Elliott, chairman of School District 22.

Bristow’s natural storytelling ability, neatly devised and detailed plots, sharply drawn characters, telling eye for landscape and its detail, use of common sense, gift for dramatic effect, and emotional sincerity were the characteristics of her work that critics and reviewers singled out for praise. Margaret Wallace spoke of her “solid and versatile talent as a novelist.” The critic Susan Quinn Berneis claimed that Bristow’s greatest skill was reserved for “the unfolding of American history as displayed around the lives of the people who created it.” And Eugene Armfield remarked that she belonged “among those Southern novelists who [were] trying to interpret the South and its past in critical terms.”

While Brodie was at Winthrop College during the late 1920s, her biology professor noticed her interest and called her to the attention of Howard K. Gloyd, a well-known herpetologist. Gloyd helped Brodie get a position at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, where there was an excellent program in herpetology under the direction of Alexander G. Ruthven. During her first year there she stayed with Frank N. Blanchard and his wife, and Blanchard taught her many of the procedures used by professional herpetologists. On trips back to her Leesville home she collected many specimens for the University of Michigan collection.

More than 550 pieces of sculpture are displayed in an outdoor setting, grouped with plants carefully selected to set off the smooth, classic lines of marble, bronze, and even gold-leaf figurative sculpture. In addition to works by Anna Hyatt Huntington and several contemporary sculptors, the Brookgreen collection includes pieces by Frederic Remington, Herbert Adams, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French, and John Quincy Adams Ward. Ten garden “rooms” are highlighted by ponds, fountains, and sculpture set off by native plants and seasonal flowers.

Brooks is best known for his assault on U.S. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in May 1856. Following the eruption of violence on the Kansas frontier, Sumner delivered a speech unusually harsh by the Senate’s standards. He assailed South Carolina’s role in American history (especially during the Revolutionary War) and even attacked by name Senator Andrew P. Butler (who was a distant cousin of Brooks). With the aged Butler unable to defend himself or his state, the task fell to his nearest relative, Congressman Brooks, whose familiarity with South Carolina’s traditions of family honor was surpassed only by his fluency with the code duello. After considering his alternatives and waiting for Senator Sumner to apologize publicly, Brooks decided to punish Sumner. On May 22 he entered the Senate chamber after the Senate had adjourned and found Sumner at his desk. Brooks delivered several blows to Sumner’s head with a gutta-percha cane, and the senator fell senseless to the floor.

Following the death of Governor Edward Tynte in June 1710, Broughton was a leading candidate for the governorship. He lost, however, after Robert Gibbes bribed a councilor and secured the post for himself. Broughton and armed supporters marched on Charleston in protest but withdrew shortly thereafter. Capitalizing again on family connections, Broughton became lieutenant governor of South Carolina in 1731, after being recommended by Governor Robert Johnson, his brother-in-law. Following Johnson’s death in May 1735, Broughton assumed the role of acting governor.

One of the myriad organizations that gave structure to the free black community and functioned primarily as a mutual aid association. During its early history, free blacks received minimal benefits from public services and had to provide for their own needs. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, some members were college-educated professionals. Affiliation with the society became a marker of aristocratic status within Charleston’s black community.

In September 1954 U.S. Senator Burnet Rhett Maybank died. His death occurred after the Democratic Party’s primary but before the general election. The South Carolina Democratic Party’s executive committee held a special meeting and decided to select Edgar Brown as the party’s candidate rather than hold a special election. In response, Strom Thurmond announced a write-in candidacy for the U.S. Senate, claiming that his campaign was a fight for principle— government by the people instead of government by a small group of committee members. Thurmond’s write-in campaign was successful, and he became the first candidate ever elected to Congress by a write-in vote.

While he was called the “Godfather of Soul,” his body of work forms the rhythmic foundations of funk, disco, and hip-hop. He is arguably the most sampled musical artist of all time.

After practicing medicine in North Carolina for two years, Brown moved to Charleston and became the first black female physician to practice in South Carolina. With several other African Americans, she contributed to the establishment of the Cannon Hospital and Training School for Nurses in 1897, which was later renamed McClennan-Banks Hospital.

After white church officials in Charleston reduced the control that black Methodists heretofore exercised over their church affairs, Brown led most of them from the denomination in 1817 in protest. They formed an African church, and Brown traveled to Philadelphia, where in 1818 he was admitted as an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. His Charleston church, which had grown to more than three thousand members, affiliated with this northern black denomination.

Despite Flemming’s loss at trial, her case had a significant effect on desegregation of buses and civil rights law across the country. Her incident occurred seventeen months before the famous Rosa Parks case that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Brown was among the most notorious Loyalist commanders in the South during the Revolutionary War. In one of David Ramsey’s histories of the war, Brown wrote an impassioned defense of his conduct in reply to charges of cruelty. Brown died on his St. Vincent Island plantation on August 3, 1825.

Brown’s experience in developing pension and insurance programs for large businesses convinced him that he could operate his own business. In 1972 he created American Development Corporation (ADCOR), the first minority-owned manufacturing plant in the Southeast. It was financed largely by a $200,000 Small Business Administration loan, which Brown paid back in three years.

In all volumes edited by Bruccoli, readers can expect to find interesting, critical details in the preface and notes; sometimes the editor offers his own insight into the art of writing and the abiding value of literary effort.

In February 1742, when Bryan sent the assembly a journal of his predictions that God would use the slave population to punish those who profaned his laws, the Commons House ordered his arrest. Bryan fled and underwent a grave crisis of faith. Witnesses claimed that, like Moses, he attempted to part the waters of a creek and cross that way, and he was nearly drowned. Shortly thereafter, Bryan wrote the Speaker of the House apologizing for “the Dishonour I’ve done to God, as well as the Disquiet which I may have occasioned to my Country.”

Bull participated with General William Moultrie in the American victory at Port Royal Island on February 3, 1779. Two months later the lowcountry was overrun by British General Augustine Prevost’s invasion from Georgia, and defeat and desertions decimated Bull’s regiment. After the fall of Charleston in May 1780, Bull went into self-imposed exile in Virginia and Maryland and offered no more service to the patriot cause.

Bull inherited Ashley Hall, a plantation on the Ashley River. In 1704 he built a handsome brick mansion on the site and with his kinfolks, the Draytons and the Middletons, transformed the Ashley River area into a showplace of the planter elite. Bull was also among the early settlers in Prince William’s Parish on the colony’s southern frontier. His plantation, called Sheldon, was the main source of his economic wealth.

During the 1770s Bull’s political views grew increasingly out of step as South Carolina and other colonies moved toward radical opposition to the crown. Lord William Campbell, the last royal governor, arrived at Charleston on June 18, 1775, and took office, but his term lasted only three months. On September 15 he was forced to flee the city for refuge on a British warship in Charleston harbor. The revolution was under way, and Bull’s position was an impossible one. He resigned from the Royal Council and retired to his Ashley Hall plantation. In 1777 he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the revolutionary government and was banished from the state.

Burke was elected as an anti-Federalist to the First Congress of the United States, commencing service in New York on March 4, 1789. He served on thirty-three committees and was instrumental in crafting bills that led to the judiciary act and the creation of the Library of Congress, the postal system, and the patent system. His congressional service was marked by an incident with Alexander Hamilton, whom Burke felt had slighted southern soldiers when Hamilton eulogized General Nathanael Greene.