Randolph Cemetery
Front:
Randolph Cemetery, founded in 1871, was one of the first black cemeteries in Columbia. It was named for Benjamin Franklin Randolph (1837-1868), a black state senator assassinated in 1868 near Hodges, in Abbeville County. Randolph, a native of Kentucky and a free black before the Civil War, had been a chaplain in the Union Army, an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and a newspaper publisher before he was elected to represent Orangeburg County in the S.C. Senate in 1868.
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Eight other black lawmakers from the Reconstruction era are buried here: Henry Cardozo (1830-1886), William Fabriel Myers (1850-1917), William Beverly Nash (1822-1888), Robert John Palmer (1849-1928), William M. Simons (1810-1878), Samuel Benjamin Thompson (1837-1909), Charles McDuffie Wilder (1835-1902), and Lucius W. Wimbush (1839-1872). Randolph Cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesBarry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesBarry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection, Stanford Libraries
Marker data: South Carolina Historical Marker Program, SC Department of Archives and History
Sponsored by Downtown Columbia Task Force and the Committee for the Restoration and Beautification of Randolph Cemetery
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