Civil Rights in South Carolina

The civil rights movement in South Carolina has an epic and tumultuous history, beginning with the very first statewide meeting of the NAACP in 1939.

With stories of sit-ins, movements and the integration of state universities, this is the first comprehensive history of South Carolina's civil rights struggles. And behind every achievement are the major legal rulings that protected them, interspersed with the familiar names of Thurgood Marshall, Matthew Perry, Ernest A. Finney and Judge Waties Waring. Join former South Carolina NAACP president and activist James L. Felder as he recounts the epic struggle African Americans have faced, from fighting for the right to vote to the desegregation of public spaces and all the efforts in between.

James L. Felder has been involved in voter registration and education in South Carolina since 1967. He was one of three blacks elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1970, becoming the first to serve since Reconstruction. His first book, I Buried John F. Kennedy, reveals the role he played in the funeral of President Kennedy in 1963. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina. He has two children, Jimmy and Adrienne, and two grandsons, Lance and Sean.