African Americans in South Carolina

African-American South Carolinians are residents of the state of South Carolina who are of African ancestry. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, African Americans were 28% of the state's population. The first African descendants were brought on South Carolina shores as slaves by wealthy white planters from Barbados. Black people constituted the majority population of the colony by 1720, but were largely enslaved for plantation labor. This intensified when the later U.S. state of South Carolina largely switched from a rice-and-indigo-growing agriculture to one of cotton. The Civil War freed most African-Americans in the state, and a troubled respite from racist terrorism prevailed during the Reconstruction Era, but segregation dominated the government and economy of South Carolina from the 1870s to the 1960s, when the Civil rights movement occurred and African-Americans regained their voting rights.

A subset of the African-American population, the Gullah, live largely on the coastline of South Carolina.

External links

• South Carolina African Americans – History, Culture, and Resources