In the vast history of South Carolina, women are often not given the credit they deserve. South Carolinian women have done everything, from dominating the finance sector to opening a school for black children, despite 3 previous attempts being burned down by racists. Though often overlooked, the women of South Carolina are trailblazers, and Carolina Snaps offered one way of preserving their legacies.
Carolina Snaps highlights South Carolina's people, places, and significant historical events...all in a snap! These 60-second episodes can be found on Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts, scetv.org, and the SCETV App.
Septima Poinsette Clark
Septima Poinsette Clark, the daughter of a former slave, was born in Charleston in 1898. She opened the first “Citizenship School” where Black people could learn to read and write well enough to pass literacy tests, which were required to vote at the time. Clark was an outspoken voting rights activist, as well as a civil rights activist. In 1956, South Carolina legislature banned city and state employees from being involved in civil rights organizations, and Clark, being on the NAACP, refused to resign and instead, she was fired from her teaching position, as well as losing her pension. Her pension was later returned to her in 1979, after President Jimmy Carter presented her with the Living Legacy Award.
Modjeska Monteith Simkins
Known as the “matriarch of civil rights activists” in South Carolina, Modjeska Monteith Simkins was a respected figure of the era, and though her influence persists, many South Carolinians don’t even know her name. Simkins was a founder of the South Carolina conference of the NAACP and served as secretary of the conference for 16 years, between 1941-1957. Born in Columbia in 1899 and graduating from Benedict College in 1921, Simkins first worked as a math teacher before devoting her life to fighting for equality and advocating for human rights. Her home still stands on the corner of Elmwood and Marion Streets in Columbia, SC, and serves as an exhibit displaying her legacy.
Maude Callen
Maude Callen, born in1898 in Tallahassee, Florida, served an impoverished community in crisis in 1923, when she answered the call to become a medical missionary in Pineville, South Carolina. Maude was unfortunately orphaned at 6 years old and was sent to live with her uncle, the first Black physician in Tallahassee. She followed in the footsteps of her uncle, getting a nursing degree from the Tuskegee Institute. Callen served the Pineville community for almost 60 years, and was said to have delivered at least 800 babies and trained another 400 women as midwives. Her legacy, more so than others, is unique and will live on in the midwives she taught and the babies born into the world in her hands.
Darla Moore
Did you know the first woman featured on the cover of Fortune magazine was from South Carolina? Darla Moore was born August 1st, 1954, in Lake City, SC. Moore initially went into politics after graduating from the University of South Carolina with a degree in political science, but after working for the Republican National Committee for a year, she decided that politics was not the career for her. After receiving her MBA in 1981, Moore went on to work in the banking and finance industry, where she really thrived. In 1998, Moore announced a significant donation to USC’s Business School, which went on to be the first business school in the United States named after a woman.
Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune
Nothing stood between Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune and her dreams. Born in Mayesville, SC, on July 10th, 1875, McLeod showed an inclination for teaching early. When she started attending the black one-room school 5 miles from her home in Mayesville, she would return home to recite everything she learned to the few of her 17 siblings who didn’t attend school. When Bethune and her husband were persuaded to move to Florida, Bethune became determined to open a school for Black girls. In October 1904, Bethune began renting a small house in Daytona, FL for $11 a month, and opened the Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls. The school grew quickly, and Bethune was able to court white organizations and businessmen to keep the school running, bringing in plentiful donations. Starting in 1923, the school merged with the coeducational Cookman Institute, the first Black college in Florida. The two schools became one and were renamed to Bethune-Cookman University in 1931. Bethune was named the president during a time when women were rarely in such a position, making waves for Black women in education everywhere.
Mary Simms Oliphant
When you think of South Carolina history textbooks, you don’t often think of the people whose job it was to write the book. Mary Simms Oliphant, granddaughter of novelist William Gilmore Simms, was tasked with updating her grandfather’s 1860 history of South Carolina to be used as a textbook. Her version was adopted in 1917 and was updated every 5 years until 1932, when she wrote an entirely new SC history textbook. This textbook went on to have 9 editions and was used in middle school classrooms until the 1980s. Oliphant’s textbooks have faced criticism in the years since it’s discontinuation, with it being considered relatively apologetic towards confederate sentiment, and briefly mentioning African Americans in only nine pages of the 432-page textbook. Her impact cannot be denied (despite any creative liberties that may not have aged well); her words were read and recited in classrooms across the state for 60 years, and she ultimately taught 5 generations of South Carolina students about the state’s history.
Elizabeth Evelyn Wright
Of the 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the US, only 2 were founded by black women: Bethune-Cookman University and Voorhees University, right here in Denmark, SC. Voorhees University was founded by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright in 1897, after Wright battled many obstacles to finally open a school for Black students in South Carolina. (Three separate times before that, Wright's attempts were thwarted by arsonists burning her schools down!) Her school, then called the Denmark Industrial School, started out in one room above a store and was modeled after the teachings of the Tuskegee Institute, because Wright was a graduate herself. After a generous $5,000 donation from Ralph Voorhees, a New Jersey philanthropist, Wright was able to purchase land and build a proper building for the school. In 1902, the school reopened as the Voorhees Industrial School and was for co-ed students at the elementary and high school levels. It went on to be the only high school in the area for Black students for years, before it became affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church and a fully accredited 4-year college.
Marian Wright Edelman
A dedicated children’s rights and civil rights activist, Marian Wright Edelman was an icon in advancing political gains for marginalized communities. Born in 1939 in Bennettsville, SC, Edelman has made significant progress for just one woman in politics. She graduated from Spelman College as a valedictorian in 1960, but not before she became involved in the Civil Rights movement and found herself, along with 77 other students, being arrested for a sit-in demonstration in a segregated Atlanta restaurant.
She went on to be the first Black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar in 1964, going on to represent civil rights activists in Mississippi and later helped in establishing the Head Start Program, which would change early childcare and education in America forever. Edelman also worked to organize Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s campaign in the ’60s and founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm. Edelman was also elected the first Black woman to serve on the Yale board of trustees in 1971. Edelman has achieved so much for Black people as well as childhood education, and for that, she deserves her flowers.
Anne Austin Young
Anne Austin Young, born January 1892 in Laurens County, South Carolina, dedicated her life to bringing quality healthcare to the people of SC. Young enrolled at Presbyterian College at age 14, where she graduated with honors. She then attended the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia until 1915, when she graduated with the highest scholastic average among fellow students. She returned home and took the South Carolina Medical Board and achieved the highest score on record at the time. Settling and working in Anderson County, she married physician Charles Henry Young, and they both dedicated their time to working at Anderson Memorial Hospital, Anne working there for almost 60 years. Over the decades, Young assisted in the delivery of over 11,000 babies and was praised for her patient care as well as her service as a clinician for the mentally ill. In 1981, Young became the second woman inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame.
Susan Pringle Frost
Charleston would not look the way it does today if not for a woman, Susan Pringle Frost, to be specific. Frost was born in 1873 in the Miles Brewton House, a historical home commissioned by a wealthy slave trader (and Frost’s ancestor) in 1765 that her family had owned since. This no doubt influenced her later work in conservation as well as real estate, as she was always around Charleston’s historical buildings. She started working in real estate while she was a court reporter and eventually opened her own real estate office in 1920. Frost was more than a real estate agent, though; in 1913, she had started the Equal Suffrage League of Charleston as well as joined the National Women’s Party.
When she learned that the Joseph Manigault House (another historical building in Charleston) was threatened with being demolished for a gas station to be built on the lot, Frost convened the first meeting of the Preservation Society of Charleston with 31 others on April 21, 1920. Frost went on to further expand her real estate horizons when she bought a handful of historic buildings in Charleston, before renovating and reselling them. One day, she had the idea to paint one of her renovated houses in pastel paint, and that quickly became the precedent for other renovated houses in the surrounding area, today known as Rainbow Row.
Eartha Kitt
Once called the “most exciting woman in the world,” by Orson Welles and known for captivating audiences on both the big screen and the stage, Eartha Kitt is probably one of the most recognizable figures from South Carolina to this day. Born January 1927 in North, SC, a lot of Kitt’s early life was shrouded in mystery while she was alive, as even her birth was controversial. It was reported that her father was the son of the owner of the plantation where she was born, her mother Cherokee and Black, and that she was the result of rape. Kitt’s mother did not accept her because of her light skin, and soon enough, she left Eartha to start a new life with a Black man who also refused to accept her daughter. Kitt then went to live with a relative, Aunt Rosa, who turned out to be extremely abusive. After Aunt Rosa’s death, Kitt was sent to Harlem, NY, to live with another relative, Mamie Kitt.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, Kitt put in the work to get her name out, acting in multiple stage plays and eventually working in movies and TV. She gained critical acclaim for her performance as Catwoman in the 3rd and final season of the original Batman TV series. Though Kitt’s public image took a slight hit after making anti-war statements during a White House luncheon, she was able to reestablish her cultural relevance in the final decade of her life with the voice-acting roles that she took on during this time. Eartha Kitt was truly a once-in-a-lifetime talent to come out of South Carolina.
