![]() Thurmond, who staged a record-setting filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, began appointing Black staffers and signed off on a Black federal judge. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended legal segregation of public accommodations and workplaces and brought Blacks into the electorate. During the civil rights era, most whites opposed integration, but unlike in Alabama and Mississippi, the effort was mostly not punctuated by violence. More recently, South Carolina has taken steps forward. Mostly white Upstate South Carolina, with a growing textile industry, took the political lead, led by such politicians as Pitchfork Ben Tillman (governor 1890-94, senator 1895-1918) and a close friend’s son, Strom Thurmond (governor 1947-51, senator 1954-2003). ![]() ![]() A silver lining was architectural-the old mansions of Charleston were not replaced by commercial buildings, and instead were saved by the nation’s first local historic preservation movement (and rebuilt after Hurricane Hugo in 1989), cementing the city’s culture and civic pride. The Lowcountry languished in poverty, with malnutrition on coastal islands. Reconstruction briefly gave Black Republicans political control, but the backlash was fierce once federal troops left strict racial segregation and voting restrictions, including the poll tax, kept most South Carolinians disenfranchised for decades.Īs late as 1944, in a state of 2 million people, only 103,000 voted for president, with 88 percent of them voting Democratic. Some 30 percent of military-age white males were killed, and one of the wealthiest states became one of the poorest. A post-war transformationĭefeat in the Civil War transformed South Carolina. In April 1861, a cannon near Charleston fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter. In December, after the election of Abraham Lincoln, the South Carolina legislature voted to secede from the Union and was soon followed by other states. In that year and the next, South Carolina did more than any other state to precipitate the Civil War. Lowcountry planters maintained effective control of the legislature, and therefore the state’s two Senate seats and presidential electors, up through 1860. South Carolinian Charles Pinckney led the effort to enshrine the principle of no religious tests for political office in the Constitution, yet he was also a slaveholder. At the same time, they also owned giant plantations where slavery enabled the production of rice and indigo. On the one hand, early Carolina plantation owners were tolerant of some groups, opening their colony to French Huguenots and Sephardic Jews. Until 1855, South Carolina was the only colony or state with a Black majority. The sugar-exporting island of Barbados, where the majority was enslaved, produced many of South Carolina’s original, non-indigenous settlers. Tragedy and coexistence have been dueling parts of South Carolina’s history from the beginning. But in 2020, it helped elect a president, and in 2024, it is poised to vault to the head of the Democratic presidential nomination calendar. In recent years, South Carolina has been vaulted into the headlines for tragic incidents and efforts at reconciliation. See the information at the bottom of the article to learn about a special limited offer to purchase this seminal work. Editor’s Note: Seasoned national political author Louis Jacobson offers a new look at how South Carolina has influenced and will influence national politics in this updated profile in the 2024 edition of the Almanac of American Politics.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |