--- title: Charleston Church Shooting and a City's Place in Civil Rights History description: The South Carolina city has been witness to a long battle for equality canonical: https://time.com/3928713/charleston-civil-rights-movement/ author: Lottie Joiner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-19T18:50:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:02:56.380Z article:section: History og:title: Charleston Church Shooting and a City's Place in Civil Rights History og:description: The South Carolina city has been witness to a long battle for equality og:url: https://time.com/3928713/charleston-civil-rights-movement/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd36532b4f56c5a3/69885570524fc095ccdf3349/coretta.jpeg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Coretta Scott King Marches In Charleston og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Charleston Church Shooting and a City's Place in Civil Rights History twitter:description: The South Carolina city has been witness to a long battle for equality twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd36532b4f56c5a3/69885570524fc095ccdf3349/coretta.jpeg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Charleston’s Place in the Civil Rights Movement by [Lottie Joiner](https://time.com/author/lottie-joiner/) ## Lottie Joiner Jun 19, 2015 6:50 PM UTC  Coretta Scott King (1927 - 2006), center,marches with hospital workers, striking for the right to unionize and bargain with management, Charleston, SC, 1969. Coretta Scott King (1927 - 2006), center,marches with hospital workers, striking for the right to unionize and bargain with management, Charleston, SC, 1969.PhotoQuest / Getty Images by [Lottie Joiner](https://time.com/author/lottie-joiner/) ## Lottie Joiner Jun 19, 2015 6:50 PM UTC Think of the Civil Rights Movement, and you’re unlikely to think of Charleston, S.C. We think of Montgomery, Ala., home of Rosa Parks. We think of Mississippi for the tragic killing of Medgar Evers, Birmingham for the horrendous murder of four little girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, Selma for the brutal beating of hundreds of voting rights advocates as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. But Charleston—the city where on Wednesday [a man opened fire](http://time.com/3928072/charleston-death-penalty/) inside a historic black church, killing nine—indeed has a history rich in the fight for racial justice. One may say the civil rights movement in Charleston started as early as 1862, when slave Robert Smalls led a revolt in which he and 12 others took over the steamboat they were working on during the Civil War and offered it to Union forces. He won his family’s freedom, became a state senator and served in the U.S. Congress for five years. But despite his feel-good story, lynchings, Jim Crow and segregation ruled the land in post-Civil War Charleston. The city’s local NAACP branch was established in 1917\. Its earliest battles were over education, as the branch fought to get black teachers hired in the school district. Educator Septima Poinsette Clark became one of the city’s leading civil rights activists fighting for equal pay for black teachers. She was fired in 1956 when the South Carolina state legislature passed a law ruling that state employees could not be members of the NAACP. Clark continued to work with the NAACP and eventually worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization co-founded by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., to teach adult literacy and voting rights education in Citizenship Schools throughout the South. She became the first black woman elected to the Charleston School Board in 1975. There was a rumbling throughout the country. African Americans were restless—they faced poor schools, few jobs and segregated facilities, and something had to give. In 1950, NAACP attorney and future U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall led a team of lawyers in filing a lawsuit against Clarendon County schools, challenging school segregation. Local Charleston service-station attendant Harry Briggs and his wife Eliza, a maid, were the first petitioners on the complaint. Though a three-judge panel upheld the school system’s segregation policy in _Briggs v. Elliott_, Judge Walter Warring dissented, writing that “segregation is per se inequality.” The Briggs case was combined with four other school desegregation cases in the historic 1954 _Brown v. Board of Education_ case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled separate but supposedly equal public schools unconstitutional. But integration would be difficult. One of the main proponents of desegregation in Charleston was Rev. Joseph DeLaine, a minister and educator who fought to desegregate transportation and facilities as well as schools in Clarendon County. After the _Brown_ ruling, his home and church were burned to the ground. The civil rights activist moved to another county but continued to receive death threats. DeLaine was forced to leave South Carolina altogether after firing back at night-riders who shot at his home, threatening his family. Indeed, nearly a decade later Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would visit Charleston during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He spoke at the historic Emanuel AME Church in 1962\. Inspired, the city’s black community boycotted segregated facilities, low wages and lack of employment opportunities in the summer of 1963\. Their peaceful protest would be called the Charleston Movement, led by NAACP leader J. Arthur Brown and Rev. James Blake. The civil rights activists created a blacklist of stores, restaurants and theaters that did not serve or hire African Americans. One of the protestors, Harvey Gantt, helped lead a sit-in at Kress department store. Gantt became the first African American student to enroll in Clemson University that year and later served two terms as mayor of Charlotte, N.C. More than a thousand African American citizens went to jail during the Charleston Movement, but Kress and other stores eventually opened their doors to blacks at the end of the protest. In the fall of 1963, 11 students desegregated Charleston Public Schools. And it didn’t stop there: After her husband’s death, Coretta Scott King led a march for workers’ rights in the city of Charleston. As the world-changing decade came to a close, female workers of the Charleston Hospital went on strike in 1969 to protest poor working conditions and low wages. Some cities rise to the top of discussions of the civil rights movement, just as the decade of the ‘60s does. But, just as a place like Charleston may have a less celebrated but still crucial place within that history, so has the story of the fight against racial inequality continued. ### See Charleston Come Together to Mourn Church Shooting Victims  People sing "We Shall Overcome" during a service at Morris Brown AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on June 18, 2015. Brendan Smialowski—AFP/Getty Images  The Rev. Sidney Davis leads mourners during a community prayer service for the nine victims of the shooting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, at Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, S.C. on June 18, 2015. Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images  Mourners gather outside Morris Brown AME Church for a vigil one day after a mass shooting in Charleston, S.C., on June 18, 2015. Brian Snyder—Reuters  Mourners hold hands as they pause outside Morris Brown AME Church during a vigil one day after a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 18, 2015. Brian Snyder—Reuters  Nine-year-old Liam Eller (R), helps officers move flowers left behind outside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church after the street was re-opened a day after a mass shooting left nine dead during a bible study at the church in Charleston, South Carolina, June 18, 2015. Brian Snyder—Reuters  Kim Hamby, right, prays with her daughter Kayla, 4, as they lay flowers at a makeshift memorial down the street from where a church shooting killed nine people in Charleston, S.C., on June 18, 2015. David Goldman—AP  People sit on the steps of the Morris Brown AME Church while services are held one day after the church shooting in Charleston, S.C., on June 18, 2015. Brendan Smialowski—AFP/Getty Images  People wait outside of Morris Brown AME Church while services are held in Charleston, S.C., on June 18, 2015. Brendan Smialowski—AFP/Getty Images  People gather outside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church after the street was re-opened a day after a mass shooting left nine dead during a bible study at the church in Charleston, S.C., on June 18, 2015. Brian Snyder—Reuters  Reverend Al Sharpton visits the memorial site at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church where nine people were murdered in Charleston, S.C., on June 18, 2015. John Taggart—EPA  Mourners cast shadows on the walls and the makeshift memorial at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. on June 18, 2015. Brian Snyder—Reuters  Mourners light candles for the nine victims of the shooting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 18, 2015 in Charleston, S.C. 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