Historic Summerton church part of 'Top 10 Black History Sites to visit in South Carolina'

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A Summerton church that served in the mid-20th century as a gathering place for civil rights activities bent on the destruction of state-sanctioned school segregation has been named one of the "Top 10 Black History Sites to Visit in South Carolina." Historic Liberty Hill AME Church shares the No. 5 spot on the list with the old Summerton High School, which operated where the Clarendon School District 1 administrative offices now function. Meetings held at the church in the 1940s and 1950s led to local court cases that helped bring about the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954. The decision declared segregation unconstitutional. The South Carolina African American Heritage Commission released the list on Thursday, producing a larger list of nearly 300 such sites for its new online travel guide, the Green Book of South Carolina at www.GreenBookofSC.com. Several of the sites included on the Top 10 list have a connection to the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. April 4 will be the 50th anniversary of King's shooting death by James Earl Ray. Some of the sites hearken back to the days of slavery. The South Carolina African American Heritage Commission noted that many African-Americans can trace family roots back to Charleston and South Carolina as a whole. The commission holds that about 40 percent of enslaved Africans arrived in North American on ships that docked in the Charleston Harbor. These slaves were then sold to plantation owners throughout the Antebellum South. During the "Great Migration" about 6 million blacks moved to the Northeast, Midwest and West between 1916 and 1970. At the beginning of the Civil War, the U.S. was home to 4 million slaves, 400,000 of whom lived in South Carolina. Their labor created enormous wealth for white rice and cotton planters, and these slaves built entire cities, including Charleston. "This list is meant to raise awareness of black history and to assist the commission's efforts to identify, preserve, mark and protect the state's many sites connected to black history and heritage," said commission ex-officio board member Dawn Dawson-House, who is employed with the state Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism. Dawson-House told The Charleston Post and Courier that the list includes sites found throughout the state, and that commission members have found that most locals not only know about their sites, but are fiercely proud of them. She said the commission has worked hard in the last two decades to find and maintain more historical sites."In the past 24 years, more than 200 markers have been added to the official state markers program," said Dawson-House. "When the commission started, there were only about 35 markers dedicated to black history." Charleston, she noted, has a disproportionate number of such markers due to its aforementioned status as a place where slaves disembarked boats coming from Africa to North America. "No matter where you are in South Carolina, there is an important African-American heritage element or place to visit," she said."But the entire story is not told collectively. It's told in bits and pieces in everybody's community. At the commission we've decidede we have to pull together an entire portrait of this history." Commission founding member Michael Allen said that the Green Book is "a manifestation of our 24-year journey." He said the book aims to assist anyone interested in black history as a reference to the Jim Crow-era guide that African-Americans used when traveling through the South. The old guide provided information about black-owned and black-friendly businesses (gas stations, hotels, restaurants, hospitals) that were safe for black travelers during the period of legal segregation. “When you went traveling some place, you cooked your food, packed your food, the food was in your car,” Allen said. “You planned visits according to where relatives lived, or drove straight to where you needed to be.” The modern iteration of the Green Book, instead, is meant for everybody, Allen said. “We think this is a great opportunity to connect the community, the history, the legacy and the African American experience of South Carolinians and the traveling public,” he said. Click here to see the Top 10 Black History Sites to Visit in South Carolina.