COLUMBIA — The University of South Carolina will establish a Center for Civil Rights History and Research to chronicle the contributions of the Palmetto State to the American civil rights movement.

University President Harris Pastides announced the creation of the center Monday (Nov. 23). It will be the first single entity dedicated to telling South Carolina’s civil rights story. Also Monday, Rep. James Clyburn, the state’s first African-American member of Congress since Reconstruction and the assistant House Democratic leader, said he would donate his Congressional papers to the new center.

“I am honored to add my Congressional papers to the University of South Carolina’s significant civil rights collection. The establishment of the Center for Civil Rights History and Research allows for my Congressional papers to be a part of a larger effort to give vibrancy to South Carolina’s history and credence to its civil rights activities,” Clyburn said. “I look forward to the center, and my papers, helping us learn valuable lessons from our experiences.”

The University of South Carolina has a significant collection of papers from noted civil rights leaders, including Joseph A. De Laine, John Bolt Culbertson, I. DeQuincey Newman and Modjeska Monteith Simkins, but currently they are not housed collectively or used in a way to best tell South Carolina’s story.

“In 2013, when USC commemorated the 50th anniversary of USC’s desegregation, our community of scholars had an opportunity to hear first-hand narratives from two of the university’s desegregation pioneers. At that time, we had already built a substantial political collection from key South Carolina figures, but realized that there needed to be an additional place to zero in on the state’s unique civil rights history — a place that would be accessible not only to USC students but to scholars worldwide,” Pastides said. “The Center for Civil Rights History and Research, anchored by Congressman Clyburn’s Congressional papers, is that place, and will house a substantial and growing collection that will tell the story of the ongoing struggle for equality and social justice in South Carolina.”