South Carolina View Establishments by South Carolina Cities
South Carolina: A Center of Great Migration
During the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands African Americans left the South in pursuit of improved social and economic opportunities in the North. African Americans made up the majority of South Carolina’s population prior to the Great Migration. By 1930, more South Carolinians were white than Black, for the first time since the 1810s.
Vibrant Black communities and business districts flourished across the state, in spite of the population change and as a facilitator of it. Over the course of its publication, The Negro Traveler’s Green Book included 171 South Carolina sites. They tended to be clustered around larger cities like Charleston, Columbia, or the Greenville-Spartanburg region. Tourist destinations like Atlantic Beach, a Black beach community north of Myrtle Beach, were also featured. While the upstate region experienced a larger drop in the Black population than the coastal region during the first wave of the Great Migration (1910-1940), by the second wave (1940-1970), the population drop was greater in Charleston than Greenville.
Today, the majority of South Carolina’s Green Book sites are no longer extant. Many were victim to demolition, disrepair, or urban renewal initatives from the 1960s and 70s.
—Ellis McClure
