The Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Charleston

On the campus of the College of Charleston in South Carolina, the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture has operated since 1985 as a museum, archive and research center. Its home is the former Avery Normal Institute, the city's first accredited secondary school for African Americans and long a center of Black life in Charleston.

A school founded after the Civil War

After the Civil War ended in 1865, the American Missionary Association of New York City founded a secondary school for African American students in Charleston. Its classes met at first in various federally owned buildings around the city. The school's second principal, Reverend Francis Cardoza, wanted a permanent home, and he asked the association to seek money for a building from the estate of Reverend Charles Avery of Pittsburgh, an abolitionist and supporter of education for African Americans. The new building was finished in 1868, and the school took the name Avery Normal Institute.

A hub for Black Charleston

The institute served Charleston's prominent Black families and became a center of the city's African American community. It favored a classical liberal arts curriculum, offering college preparatory classes and teacher training, and by 1880 it had close to 500 students. It also prepared its students to lead: it helped establish Charleston's first branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and several Avery graduates became prominent civil rights activists before and during the civil rights movement.

After World War II the institute became a public city school instead of a private one. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregating public school students by race was inherently unconstitutional, and Charleston responded by closing the institute and merging its students and faculty into Burke High School. The school building and the teachers' residence next door were then used by Palmer Business College until the late 1970s.

From school to research center

In 1978, alumni led by Lucille Whipper, a member of the class of 1944, founded the Avery Institute of Afro-American History and Culture to buy and renovate the old buildings and create a museum and archive of African American history and culture in South Carolina. After buying the buildings, the institute explored options with the College of Charleston. The buildings were deeded to the college, which in partnership with the institute established the Avery Research Center as part of the college.

The center today

The Avery Research Center runs a museum and research center and holds a large archival collection. Its work is to evaluate, acquire, preserve and interpret materials on the history and culture of the African diaspora. The collections run from the 19th century to the present and cover subjects including civil rights, labor movements, education and church records. The center gives tours, hosts workshops and lectures, and works with local schools and communities on educational and cultural programs.

The Avery Institute remains a separate nonprofit that supports the center's operations, museum, education and public history programs, and helps it acquire archival material. Together they carry on the Avery Normal Institute's legacy by teaching about African American history and culture in Charleston, the South Carolina Lowcountry and beyond.

Part of a national network

The Avery Research Center joined the African American Civil Rights Network in 2022. Created by the African American Civil Rights Act of 2017 and coordinated by the National Park Service, the network recognizes the civil rights movement and the sacrifices of those who fought discrimination and segregation, and tells its story through public and private sites and programs.

Sources

• National Park Service, African American Civil Rights Network, "The College of Charleston's Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture": https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-college-of-charleston-s-avery-research-center-for-african-american-history-and-culture.htm
• The photograph of the building on the source page is credited to the College of Charleston and is not reproduced.