Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture

The school opened in 1865, founded by the American Missionary Association for African American students in Charleston. A permanent building followed in 1868, funded in part from a Pittsburgh abolitionist's estate, and the institution took the name Avery Normal Institute — Charleston's first accredited secondary school for African Americans, a hub for the city's Black community for nearly ninety years. When the school closed in 1954, alumni didn't let the buildings go quiet. In 1978, led by Lucille Whipper, they organized to reclaim the site. By 1985, it had become the Avery Research Center, now part of the College of Charleston, holding over six thousand archival materials on African American life in the Lowcountry.