Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum
The Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum is a museum in Orangeburg, South Carolina commemorating the civil rights movement. The curator of the museum is photographer Cecil J. Williams. Collection and background. The museum holds thirty-five historical exhibits consisting of 500 photographs and over 200 artifacts concerning the civil rights movement in South Carolina during the 1950s and 1960s. The exhibits focus of major events, such as the "Briggs v. Elliott" Supreme Court case, the Orangeburg Freedom Movement, Harvey Gantt admission to Clemson University, the Orangeburg Massacre, and the 1969 Charleston  hospital strike. The museum also offers other attractions, including a civil rights movement timeline, an 800-name recognition wall, a digitization laboratory, a sign-in wall, media and presentation center, community meeting room, library, and gift shop. The 3,500-square-foot museum opened in 2019. It is located in a building Williams designed in 1986. Initially, Williams funded the museum himself until it generated interests from visitors and attracted regional and national grants. In 2020, the museum was featured on national television, and National Geographic. He received a $100,000 donation for the museum a few months after its opening