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"L" is for the Laing School

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"L" is for the Laing School. Cornelia Hancock, a Civil War nurse and a Quaker, established Laing School in Mount Pleasant in an abandoned church in 1866. The school was named for the Philadelphia Quaker philanthropist Henry M. Laing. The mission of the school was to educate former slaves and inspire them to strive for high ideals and good citizenship and to make worthwhile contributions to society. Known as the Laing Industrial School, the institution offered seven years of schooling along with courses in sewing, cobbling, and manual training. In the 1930s it became the first accredited African-American school in the state. In 1940 the Pennsylvania Abolition Society that operated the school donated it to Charleston County. Since 1974 the institution has operated as Laing Middle School on Highway 17 north of Mount Pleasant.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.