#100: *We made it!* Charleston College, The Gibbes Museum of Art, and a lecture on Jonathan Jasper Wright
For South Carolina history lovers far and wide! Enjoy weekly SC history and upcoming SC historical events
Welcome to the first 100 days of the South Carolina History Newsletter! My name is Kate Fowler and I live in Greenville, SC. I have a 9-5 job in marketing, and outside of work, have a deep love of history. I started this newsletter as a passion project to learn more about our beautiful state and build a community of fellow SC history lovers along the way! To establish a foundation for the newsletter and to grow my expertise on a wide variety of South Carolina historical topics, this past February I challenged myself to post 100 newsletters in 100 days. After this coming May 21st, the newsletter will become weekly. Thank you for joining the journey!
Dear reader,
Welcome to The South Carolina History Newsletter!
Y’ALL!! WE MADE IT TO NEWSLETTER #100!!!!!!!!!! Woohooo!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey so far. It truly means the world to me. I have met so many interesting and wonderful people because of this newsletter, and I’m so grateful.
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After this amazing sprint, please note that I plan to take 2 weeks off to regroup and plan for the next round of newsletters and plans for future growth. It is an exciting time and I can’t wait to continue the journey with you as we learn about our great state of South Carolina!
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And now, let’s learn some South Carolina history!
Yours truly,
Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
➳ Featured SC History Event
Please enjoy our featured SC History Event below, and click here to visit my SC History Events Calendar that organizes all the upcoming SC history events I have discovered. Please let me know if you’d like to add an event to the calendar! Reply to this email or send me a note at schistorynewsletter@gmail.com.
Tuesday, November 19th at 6:00 pm | “Judge Gergel & Professor William Burke on Jonathan Jasper Wright” | Charleston Library Society | Charleston, SC | $10 for members and $15 for guests
“Jonathan Jasper Wright, the first African American to serve on a state Supreme Court, was born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania and grew up in nearby Susquehanna County in the northeastern corner of the state. In 1858, Wright traveled to Ithaca, New York where he enrolled in the Lancasterian Academy, a school where older students helped teach younger ones. He graduated in 1860 and for the next five years taught school and read law in Pennsylvania.
Wright’s first known political activity came in October 1864 when he was a delegate to the National Convention of Colored Men meeting in Syracuse. The convention, chaired by Frederick Douglass, passed resolutions calling for a nationwide ban on slavery, racial equality under the law and universal suffrage for adult males. When Wright applied for admission to the Pennsylvania bar, however, he was refused because of his race.
In 1865 the American Missionary Association sent Wright to Beaufort, South Carolina to organize schools for the freedpeople. Wright taught and gave legal advice to the ex-slaves. In 1866 he returned to Pennsylvania and was now, with the backing of a new Federal civil rights law, accepted into the bar as the state’s first African American attorney. Wright returned to Beaufort in January 1867 and worked as a legal advisor for the Freedman’s Bureau. He soon became active in Republican politics and was chosen as a delegate to the South Carolina Constitutional Convention that met in Charleston in January 1868. Later that year he was elected to the South Carolina state senate representing Beaufort. In 1870 the Republican-dominated legislature in Columbia named him a justice of the state supreme court even though he was 30 and had little courtroom experience. He joined two white Democrats on the bench.
By 1876 white conservatives, using fraud, intimidation and violence, managed to gain control over South Carolina’s government. However, it was Wright’s concurrence in a February 1877 decision confirming the authority of a Democratic claimant to the governor’s chair, Wade Hampton, which ended Republican rule, reconstruction in South Carolina, and Wright’s tenure as a state Supreme Court Justice. When the new Democrat-controlled legislature attempted to impeach Wright for corruption and malfeasance he at first denied the charges and vowed to defend his name and record. By August 1877, however, realizing he would not win, Wright submitted his resignation.
Wright moved to Charleston where he practiced law, then to Orangeburg where he established the law department at Claflin College. Jonathan Wright died of tuberculosis in Orangeburg in 1885.”
➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Did you know that the College of Charleston “barely survived” the Civil War?
Although plans for a college at Charleston had been discussed throughout the eighteenth century, it was not until March 1785 that the General Assembly passed an act authorizing the creation of a college “in or near the city of Charleston.”
On public land at Charleston’s western edge, rooms were “fashioned out of an old military barracks,” and instruction began on January 1, 1790.
The College of Charleston is the oldest university in South Carolina, the 13th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, and the oldest municipal college in the nation.
The school struggled to survive over the next several decades. Classes emphasized “moral discipline along with a classical liberal arts education, which included Latin and Greek, literature, rhetoric, and philosophy.”
The Reverend Robert Smith was the school’s first president, clerics “dominated the faculty, and daily routines included vespers.”
Out of 60 students who started in 1790, only 6 earned bachelor’s degrees four years later. Because of an insufficiency of advanced students and library, they were the last collegiate graduates for a third of a century.
In the early nineteenth century the college functioned as a college preparatory school. College course work resumed in the 1820s, with an enlarged library funded by the city of Charleston, a new main building (now Randolph Hall), and a faculty of laymen.
The 1830 enrollment of 62 in college classes would not be surpassed until 1904.
A rift among trustees, faculty, and students over discipline and power led to a suspension of operations in 1836.
A request of the trustees for the intervention of Charleston mayor Robert Y. Hayne resulted in 1837 in a publicly funded city college, one of the earliest in the nation.
City fathers charged the institution to be a source of cultural and economic improvement, “a Popular Institution, intended for the benefit of the great body of the people.”
Under President William T. Brantley (1838–1844), the precollege part of the curriculum was “discarded, the college faculty strengthened by the addition of John Bachman and Lewis R. Gibbes, and student fees reduced.”
10 scholarships were offered on the basis of need. Noticed by William Gilmore Simms in 1857 as a “literary college of excellent local standing,” the school had an average annual attendance of fifty in the 1840s and 1850s.
The college “barely survived the Civil War and its aftermath.” Despite dwindling numbers of students, it adhered to a liberal arts base while others restructured their offerings around modern knowledge. City support was meager, and enrollment declined.
President Harrison Randolph’s long tenure (1897–1941) effectively established a new college. The specialization of “majors” and many social science and science laboratory courses came forth along with distinctive B.A. and B.S. degrees.
Language and mathematics requirements for bachelor’s degrees were reduced, but “the master of arts added a year of course work to the thesis.” Money was raised and dormitories built. New extracurricular activities, student associations, and intercollegiate sports appeared. Enrollments rose steadily and reached 90 in 1908, most of the gain coming from outside Charleston.
In the fall of 1918, with most men of college age enlisted in military service in Europe, the trustees admitted the first women, and two years later they “proclaimed a free college for white residents.” The original group of 10 women grew to 184 in 1935 (forty-four percent of the student body), when, with the encouragement of subsidies from Charleston County Council, theoretical and practical courses in education found a place in the curriculum.
By agreement of city, county, and school officials, the College of Charleston returned to private status in 1949 in order to avoid racial integration.
In 1967 “political and legal pressures, reinforced by fiscal difficulties, opened the doors to black students.”
Shaky finances also induced President Theodore S. Stern to negotiate the transfer of the college to the state of South Carolina in 1970.
Per the South Carolina Encyclopedia:
“The acceleration of change continued. Under the able leadership of Stern and his successors, with regular injections of state money and more vigorous private fund-raising, the college grew. The faculty increased from 25 to more than 400, with new departments added to traditional programs and organized in 5 undergraduate schools: Arts, Business and Economics, Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Sciences and Mathematics.”
A graduate school, styled University of Charleston, appeared as well, although the core of the curriculum remained in the liberal arts. The physical plant expanded from 7 buildings to over 100.
The student body, “increasingly diverse and academically qualified, exceeded 12,000 when capped in 1999.”
Entering the twenty-first century, the College of Charleston has enjoyed an enhanced academic reputation.
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my source for this section
Please leave a comment below!
II.
Did you know that The Gibbes Museum of Art has a renowned collection of 18th and 19th century miniature portraits?
Located on lower Meeting Street in Charleston, the Gibbes Museum of Art is the home of the Carolina Art Association, an organization dedicated to “the cultivation of the arts and art education in Charleston since its inception in 1858.”
The building opened to the public on April 11, 1905, as the James S. Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery. It was named after James Shoolbred Gibbes, whose legacy enabled the association and the city of Charleston to purchase property and erect a building for the display of art and for art instruction.
A descendant of an old Charleston family, Gibbes was a successful merchant and stockholder in the South Carolina Railroad Company and the Gaslight Company. Through his generous bequest to the Mayor of Charleston, the Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery was erected.
Architect Frank Milburn designed the original two-story edifice in the Beaux Arts style with a notable stained-glass dome in the rotunda.
In 1976 the association began a building program to remodel and expand the original structure. The enlarged facility of 30,000 square feet opened to the public in 1978.
In 1988 the name of the organization was changed to the Gibbes Museum of Art. It is accredited by the American Association of Museums.
Entering the 21st century, the Gibbes Museum housed a collection of more than 500 paintings, including works by such nationally prominent artists as Benjamin West, Charles Willson Peale, and Gilbert Stuart, and native painters such as William H. Johnson and Edwin Harleston.
The museum also maintains a renowned collection of 18th and 19th century miniature portraits and a growing collection of contemporary art.
Other noteworthy collections include the Marks Collection of early-twentieth-century photographs, the Read Japanese Print Collection, and the Ballard Collection of European prints and drawings.
The museum’s archive documents the history of the Carolina Art Association and the artists represented in the collection.
Besides mounting permanent and temporary art exhibitions, the museum offers lectures and symposia, family and school programs, and instructional art classes.
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my sources for this section
Please leave a comment below!
➳ SC History Quote
“Hail to thee, our Alma Mater.
Hail to thy time-honored name.
Proud traditions hover 'round thee;
May we never bring thee shame.
Loyal sons and daughters love thee;
Strive to conquer and prevail.
We will sing thy praises ever -
College of Charleston, hail, all hail.
We will sing thy praises ever -
College of Charleston, hail, all hail.”
—College of Charleston Alma Mater
College of Charleston article sources:
“College of Charleston.” College of Charleston, https://cofc.edu/about/historyandtraditions/traditions.php. Accessed 15 May 2024.
Jordan, Laylon Wayne. “College of Charleston.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, 15 April 2016, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/college-of-charleston/. Accessed 15 May 2024.
Gibbes Museum of Art article sources:
Figueroa, Paul. “Gibbes Museum of Art.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, 17 May 2016, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/gibbes-museum-of-art/#:~:text=Located%20on%20lower%20Meeting%20Street,1905%2C%20as%20the%20James%20S. Accessed 15 May 2024.
“James Shoolbred Gibbes .” Gibbes Museum of Art, https://www.gibbesmuseum.org/miniatures/collection/detail/C9FA368A-ECC6-4828-ACED-515425571471. Accessed 15 May 2024.
“Prop Master at Charleston’s Gibbes Museum of Art - Southern Spaces.” Southern Spaces, https://southernspaces.org/2009/prop-master-charlestons-gibbes-museum-art/. Accessed 15 May 2024.
I always want to improve my work. Answer the poll below to give me your review of today’s newsletter. I also welcome your suggestions for new content! Simply reply to this email with your ideas. Thank you!
Congratulations on reaching your 100 post! My mother and father in law live in Aiken. I've only been to Charleston once and Aiken twice but absolutely LOVE these two places. What I have seen of SC has amazed me and would love to learn so much more about this state. Thank you for all of the incredible hard work you've done, I look forward to learning and reading more!
Congratulations on finishing the marathon! I have much enjoyed and am looking forward to the next iteration of the newsletter