Black History Month: Hallowed Grounds

The theme for Black History Month 2016 is “Hallowed Grounds: Sites of African American Memories.” As the founders of Black History Month, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History says: “One cannot tell the story of America without preserving and reflecting on the places where African Americans have made history.”

Beaufort County is blessed to have a number of significant sites directly related to the key themes in the history of Africans in the United States.  Find some listed in the South Carolina African American Heritage Foundation’s “A Teacher's Guide to African American Historic Places in South Carolina.” Download the free PDF here: http://ow.ly/XWsXq [Beaufort County entries begin on page 16].

Library staff created a page of suggested links to materials about the contributions of African-Americans to our nation’s history and culture on our Library website at http://www.beaufortcountylibrary.org/black-history-month.

We also suggest these Beaufort County Library online resources hosted by our partner, the Lowcountry Digital Library: 

• Read accounts of how the most devastating natural disaster to ever strike Beaufort District (The Great Sea Island Hurricane of 1893) affected the Gullah people in Storm Swept Coast http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/?f[collection_titleInfo_title_facet][]=The+Storm+Swept+Coast+of+South+Carolina. 

• View 11 images related to Black institutions and people in the Lucille Hasell Culp Collection: http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&f[collection_titleInfo_title_facet][]=The+Lucille+Hasell+Culp+Collection&per_page=100&search_field=all_fields&q=African+Americans

• View 92 images of African-American life in Northern Beaufort County in the Phosphate, Farms and Family collection: http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&f[collection_titleInfo_title_facet][]=Phosphate%2C+Farms%2C+%26+Family%3A+The+Donner+Collection&search_field=all_fields&q=African+American

The South Carolina State Library posted an African American History Month LibGuide at:

http://statelibrary.sc.libguides.com/black-history. Many of the materials are available for check-out with your Beaufort County Library card since the State Library and the BCL are both members of the SCLENDS consortium. 

Be sure to look at and like our BDCBCL Facebook page where there are frequent posts about Black history throughout the year, but particularly so during the month of February.