National Register of Historic Places Nominations
Similar to the State Historical Markers, the Commission noticed a lack of National Register nominations for sites associated with Black history due to the extensive research and high cost associated with completing the form. The Commission, working with the National Register coordinators at the SC Department of Archives & History created a list of sites determined eligible but had not begun the process of creating a nomination. Three local organizations partnered with the Commission to fund a consultant who conducted research, prepared the nominations, and presented them to the State Board of Review.
Current Commission-Supported Nominations
St. Paul’s Baptist Church
The property of St. Paul Baptist Church is significant to Anderson, South Carolina. St. Paul’s importance as a communal center of religious worship becomes even more noteworthy because of the leadership of the church (through the years) since its inception. The church as a building has served as a meeting place for many social and other religious meetings; this includes educational training for tutoring students, nursery center, health fairs, athletic events for teenagers with training for them, senior citizen activities, youth training, political meetings, and local and state meetings. St. Paul Baptist Church is significant to Anderson because during the period spanning the 1960s and the 1970s, the church was actively involved in the desegregation process and took a vital role in the peaceful transition of the changes that were becoming a reality in the Anderson community. This included the pastor as the leader of protests in demonstrations to show the city officials that this was a petition to secure jobs in the local post office for African American employees; his being the first African American candidate to run for a position in City Council and numerous other ventures to improve the lives of others in the community. For his commitment to serve all mankind, he received a proclamation for dedicated service and civic commitment to Anderson community in 1990 and in 2003. The church continues to serve as important role in Anderson as many members of the congregation are involved in education, business, law and politics and other ventures.
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church is significant at the local level under Criterion A, Ethnic Heritage, Black and Criterion A, Religion for its association with the elite free Black community in Charleston, which met in 1865 as the first Protestant Episcopal congregation formed by Black congregants, independently rather than as a mission church. St. Mark’s was the first Black congregation to apply for admission to the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina in 1875, setting off a decades-long debate about the status of African Americans in the Episcopal Church in South Carolina. The period of significance begins in 1875, when St. Mark’s purchased land to build their church to 1889, when the Diocese tabled their petition to be accepted into the Convention, on the racist grounds of segregation. Nearly a century after founding their congregation, St. Mark’s was one of the first Black churches invited to attend the Episcopal Convention of South Carolina in 1954, and one of the first to be officially admitted in 1965.
The building is also significant at the local level under Criterion C, Architecture, as an uncommon example of post-Civil War use of the Roman Revival style in Charleston, and as one of the last temple form churches to be constructed in the city. St. Mark’s Church was designed by architect Louis J. Barbot and constructed by the Devereux Brothers in their last partnership and is the only wood frame example of a temple form church designed by Barbot. The use of wood framing and wooden siding instead of masonry results from the fundraising challenges to a fledgling independently founded Black congregation. The congregation sought to create a formal and permanent building in which to worship, with ties to Charleston’s architectural past in the use of Roman Revival architecture that predominated before the Civil War, to help legitimize St. Mark’s as the first congregation founded by free Black Episcopalians in the city during the Reconstruction era. The church was previously listed on the National Register as a contributing property to the Charleston Historic District. The present nomination develops significance for the property at the local level to demonstrate individual eligibility of St. Mark’s Church.
St. James Rosenwald School
St. James Rosenwald School was the only public elementary school for Black pupils in Hickory Grove between1929 and 1957, and as one of only four Rosenwald school known to be extant in York County. The school served the first through seventh grades with two to three teachers throughout its year of service, and also acted as a hub of Hickory Grove’s Black community through the extracurricular, social, and public health events it hosted. In 1957, the school closed due to consolidation with other Black schools in the area as a consequence of the Equalization program, a state initiative intended to prolong segregated schools. The construction of the St. James Rosenwald School, like many other rural southern schools for Black pupils in the early 1900s, was made possible in past by the contribution of the Julius Rosenwald Fund supplemented with public funds. From 1917 to 1937, this fund helped Black southerners counteract systemic educational discrimination in the Jim Crow era by financially sponsoring school construction, teacher training, and busing. Though twenty Rosenwald schools were built in York County, St. James Rosenwald School stands as a locally rare example, physically representing the inequalities inherent in the segregated school system of the Jim Crow era and embodying the Black community’s struggle for better educational facilities and opportunities.