Randolph Cemetery

Columbia, South Carolina

A historically important African-American cemetery.

Randolph Cemetery is named of B.F. Randolph, an African American State Senator during the Reconstruction who was lynched on October 16, 1868, and his body left hanging.  Nineteen brave African- American men risked their lives to retrieve the body and return it to Columbia by mule.  Pooling their money, they purchased three acres of land to create a Black section of the cemetery.  Many well-respected African Americans are now buried here.

Other important South Carolina events include the  “Orangeburg Massacre” on the campus of South Carolina State College.  In 1968, the town’s segregated bowling alley witnessed the most violent incident in the state’s civil rights history.  After nights of protest,, 300 students gathered in the parking lot of the bowling alley only to be met by law enforcement.  The students then headed back to campus when police later fired on them killing three and injuring 27.

Then there is the “Friendship Nine,” who were the first sit-in participants to insist on remaining in jail rather than pay bail.  All nine were later convicted on trespassing charges and sentenced to hard labor for sitting at the whites-only lunch counter at McCrory’s 5-10-25 Cent Variety Store in 1961.  Finally, in 2015, they were acquitted of all charges by a South Carolina Court.

The Penn Center on St. Helena Island preserves and interprets the Sea Islands and Lowcountry African American culture known as Gullah Geechee.  There is also the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Trail, which stretches from North Carolina to Florida.  The Seashore Farmer’s Lodge African American Cultural Complex is located on James Island.

Seashore Farmers’ Lodge No. 767 on James Island, just south of Charleston, South Carolina.