Welcome
The University of South Carolina was founded in 1801 as the South Carolina College. Among the institution’s presidents, faculty, and alumni were political and intellectual leaders who ardently defended the institution of slavery and segregation. The college itself benefitted from the use of enslaved workers, who were essential to the construction of the campus and the daily operations of the institution. For four brief years during Reconstruction, 1873-1877, the university was fully integrated, and white and Black trustees, students, and faculty worked and studied together. When Reconstruction ended, the university once again became a segregated institution, and the bright years of that first integration were dismissed as a terrible aberration. USC desegregated for the second time in 1963. Interest and research in the history of African Americans at USC has surged during the last 20 years, aided by student activism. The university formally acknowledged its connections to slavery and the contributions of enslaved workers with the dedication of two markers on The Horseshoe, its original campus, in 2017. The work of the Presidential Commission on University History from 2019-2021 included the examination of names on the landscape and an initial set recommendations for removal of certain names; however, the South Carolina Heritage Act remains a major blockade, by requiring the state legislature’s approval for the removal or alteration of historical monuments from public property.