1861-1968
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1861
Southern states secede and create the Confederate States of America.
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1861-1865
The Civil War takes place and ends with the surrender of the South and formal end to slavery.
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1861-1900
The first colleges for African Americans were established largely through the efforts of black churches with the support of the American Missionary Association and the Freedmen’s Bureau. The second Morrill Act of 1890 required states—especially former confederate states—to provide land-grants for institutions for black students if admission was not allowed elsewhere. As a result, many Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were founded. Between 1861-1900, more than 90 institutions of higher learning were established, among them Shaw University, Morehouse College, and Hampton University.
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1863-1877
In the Reconstruction Era, the end of slavery gives way to sharecropping. Cotton continues to be a major crop for the South.
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1867
The Southern Education Fund (formerly the Peabody Education Fund) is established to aid in the education of the South, namely newly freed African American slaves.
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1870s-1960's
Jim Crow laws are passed in the South which codify racial segregation and limit access to voting, education, and jobs for many Black Southerners.
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1909
John D. Rockefeller Jr. Foundation made a $1 million grant ($26 million in today's dollars) to support a comprehensive public health initiative that established the Rockefeller Sanitation Commission to eradicate hookworm and other diseases in the South. It changed public health policy in the region and began the strategic philanthropy approach to grant making.
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1912
The sons of the late Dr. and Mrs. Montfort Jones of Kosciusko, Mississippi, establish the first grantmaking foundation in the South by Southerners, to honor their mother, Sallie Thomas Feild. Still in operation, the Feild Co-Operative Association, originally established in Tennessee, is now based in Jackson, Mississippi.
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1912-1932
In 1912, Booker T. Washington joined forces with philanthropist Julius Rosenwald to build rural schools for African American children across the segregated south. That partnership resulted in more than 5,300 schools, vocational shops, and teacher’s homes across 15 Southern states from 1912-1932.
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1916-1970
The Great Migration sees the movement of more than 6 million African Americans in the South to Northern cities.
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1919
The Winston-Salem Foundation, the first community foundation in the Southeast (and still in operation), launches with a $1,000 endowment gift from “Colonel” Francis Fries, a banker and railroader, whose wealth was derived primarily from the textile mill that he built on the banks of the New River in Grayson County, Virginia.
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1923
The Garland Fund awards a grant to the NAACP, the beginning of a partnership that ultimately results in the NAACP's focus on education desegregation and the landmark Brown decision.
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1924
Industrialist and philanthropist James B. Duke establishes The Duke Endowment.
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1937
Robert W. Woodruff, the chief executive of The Coca-Cola Company, insistent that his generosity remain anonymous, establishes the Trebor (“Robert” spelled backward) Foundation. Only after his death did this multi-billion dollar institution become the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation.
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1942
Wealth from the textile industry contributes to growing philanthropy in South Carolina. The Self Foundation (later the Self Family Foundation) and the Springs Close Foundation, both established in 1942, are examples.
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1943
The Spartanburg County Foundation, the first community foundation in South Carolina, is established in 1943 by Walter Scott Montgomery and seven key business leaders who saw community philanthropy as a way to address issues in the area.
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1945
The agarian economy, especially cotton farms, begin to decline as manufacturing and other industries begin to grow in the "New South."
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1949
Robert Sutherland, director of the Hogg Foundation, hosts a meeting in Austin attended by the donors and trustees of ten grantmakers, leading to the establishment of the first U.S. regional association of grantmakers, Philanthropy Southwest.
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1950
Knight Foundation formed by John S. and James L. Knight, brothers whose wealth came from newspaper publishing.
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1951
Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta founded.
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1953
Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation established in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
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1953
The Field Foundation, based in Chicago, becomes of the largest funders of the Highlander Folk School, which trained hundreds of civil rights activists, including Rosa Parks and John Lewis.
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1954
From its inception in 1954, the New World Foundation, based in Chicago (and later New York) funded civil rights advocacy in the South, particularly through its support for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and gatherings of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
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1954-1968
The Civil Rights Movement brings dramatic social and political change to the country as African Americans seek to secure legal rights and fight segregation and Jim Crow laws in the South.
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1956
Foundation Library Center (later known as Foundation Center, and now known as Candid) established in New York City.
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1957
National Council on Community Foundations (later Council on Foundations) incorporated in New York City; membership expands to private and company foundations in 1958.
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1958
Foundation for the Carolinas (FFTC) established in Charlotte, NC.
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1961
The Voter Education Project (VEP) was a discreet civil rights agency that funded African American voter registration campaigns throughout the South. Supported by civil rights leaders, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, and philanthropists, the VEP operated within the Southern Regional Council (SRC) to finance local movements and collect data on black disfranchisement.
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1963
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the Birmingham campaign help build momentum that ultmately leads to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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1965
The Selma to Montgomery marches demonstrate the desire of African American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression. Part of a broader voting rights movement throughout the American South, the marches contributed to passage year of the Voting Rights Act.
