The first black Baptist congregation in South Carolina was formed in 1773 on the Galphin Plantation near Silver Bluff, 14 miles northwest of Savannah, Georgia. The church was founded jointly by Rev. Wait Palmer, a white Connecticut minister, and African American pastor, George Liele. The … Read MoreSilver Bluff Baptist Church, Silver Bluff, South Carolina (1773- )
The son of a sailor, Richard Theodore Greener, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania became the first African American to graduate from Harvard College. He later was assigned to serve the United States in diplomatic posts in India and Russia. Greener lived in Boston, Massachusetts and … Read MoreRichard T. Greener (1844-1922)
Richard Harvey Cain was born a free black in Greenbrier County, Virginia on April 12, 1825. In 1831 his parents moved to Gallipolis, Ohio where he attended school. Seventeen years later, in 1848, he joined the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and became a minister … Read MoreRichard H. Cain (1825-1887)
Alonzo Jacob Ransier, an African American Republican from South Carolina, held a series of political posts during the Reconstruction era. Ransier was born a free black man in Charleston in 1834. Little is known of his childhood and early education. At the end of the … Read MoreAlonzo J. Ransier (1834-1882)
Black Nationalist, repatriationist, and minister, Henry M. Turner was 31 years old at the time of the Emancipation. Turner was born in 1834 in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina to free black parents Sarah Greer and Hardy Turner. The self-taught Turner by the age of fifteen … Read MoreHenry McNeal Turner (1834-1915)
Charlotte Forten Grimké grew up in a rich intellectual and activist environment. Born into a wealthy Black abolitionist family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Charlotte Louise Forten became famous in her own right as a writer and poet. Her grandparents, James, Sr. and Charlotte Forten, hosted leading … Read MoreCharlotte Forten Grimké (1837-1914)
