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AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE IN SOUTH CAROLINA'S UPPER PIEDMONT, 1780-1900

By: W.J. Megginson


Encyclopedic in scope yet intimate in detail, African American Life in South 
Carolina's Upper Piedmont, 1780-1900 delves into the richness of community life 
in a setting where blacks were relatively few, notably disadvantaged, but 
remarkably cohesive. W.J. Megginson shifts the conventional study of African 
Americans in South Carolina from the much-examined low country to a part of the 
state that offered a quite different existence for people of color. In Anderson, 
Oconee, and Pickens counties-occupying the state's northwest corner-he finds an 
independent, brave, and stable subculture that persevered for more than a 
century in the face of political and economic inequities.

Drawing on little-used state and county denominational records, privately held
research materials, and sources available only in local repositories, Megginson 
brings to life African American society before, during, and after the Civil War. 
He portrays relationships-variously cordial, patronizing, and harsh-between 
African Americans and whites; the lives of free people of color; the primal 
place of share cropping in the post-Civil War world; and the push for education 
and ownership of property as the only means of overcoming economic dependency.

Megginson's work joins a growing chorus of books that demonstrate the success
of Reconstruction across the South. Black Republicans and even some black Demo-
crats took up the rights and duties of leadership and made great strides in 
redressing antebellum wrongs. He underscores the fact that although the white 
Democrats' "redemption" of South Carolina government in 1876 greatly curtailed 
the black political movement, African Americans in the upper piedmont quietly 
continued to assert their place in the political realm.

Through detailed vignettes of individuals and families coupled with deft analy-
sis of overarching social contexts, African American Life in South Carolina's 
Upper Piedmont, 1780-1900 adds a new dimension to our understanding of the 
African American experience in South Carolina and in the South.

June 2006, 552 pages, 82 illus.

A native of upstate South Carolina, W. J. Megginson has lectured at Arkansas 
State University, Hendrix College in Arkansas, Drexel University, and La Salle 
University. He is the author of Tracing Your Family Roots, Before Slavery and 
Shortly Thereafter, and Black Soldiers in World War I: Anderson, Pickens, and 
Oconee Counties, South Carolina.

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