Justice for All: Across the State
After an exciting two years of traveling throughout South Carolina, with stops in Sumter, Columbia, Orangeburg, Hartsville, Spartanburg, Beaufort, and Georgetown from 2022-2023, the Justice for All Traveling Exhibition was on display at the Historic Booker T. Washington High School Auditorium in Columbia during the spring and summer of 2025. Justice for All is currently on hiatus. Keep an eye out for updates!
Many thanks to the institutions that hosted Justice for All:
Sumter County Museum, Martin Luther King Jr. Park, Orangeburg County Library, Hartsville Museum, USC Upstate Library, Reconstruction Era National Park, Southern Georgetown Library, and the University of South Carolina.
About the Traveling Exhibition
The Justice for All: South Carolina and the American Civil Rights Movement traveling exhibition is based on the Center’s archival exhibition on display at the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library from February through August 2019. The Justice for All traveling exhibition has several components: interpretive panels, public programming, engagement with local schools, and community dialogues.
Justice for All highlights South Carolina’s largely overlooked chapters in the national Civil Rights Movement. Learn what happened when 20-year-old Sarah Mae Flemming fought for her civil rights in 1954 after she was ejected from a downtown Columbia bus for sitting in the White- only section or when Septima Clark, Esau Jenkins, and Bernice Robinson opened the Citizenship School on Johns Island in 1957. The exhibition shares the roots of the movement, education, public demonstrations, public segregation, voting rights, economic rights, and concludes with the legacies of the movement. It includes panels, digital displays with oral histories and digital collections, and reproductions of historic items. While in Sumter and Columbia, the Civil Rights Center partnered with the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission to hold community dialogue sessions that connected the topics discussed in the exhibit with current social justice issues.
The traveling exhibit is supported by SC Humanities, Central Carolina Community Foundation, and the Williams Company.