“Randolph Cemetery and the Politics of Death in the Post-Civil War South”

This chapter examines the creation and use of Randolph Cemetery by African Americans in Columbia, South Carolina during Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Named after assassinated African-American state senator, Benjamin F. Randolph, the cemetery became an important memorial to the political advances black people made during Reconstruction and the violence they endured to achieve that progress. During Reconstruction African Americans used the cemetery to showcase their political power and to defy white Southerners’ violent intimidation. In the Jim Crow era, when white Southerners stripped African Americans of their voting rights, black people kept the memory of black political participation alive through memorial events they organized in the cemetery. Through funerals and burials, black leaders created new martyrs to racial equality, like fifteen-year-old Wade Haynes, who was executed by the state in 1893. Ultimately, this chapter contends that Randolph Cemetery demonstrates the significant role that death played in black community building, politics, and activism