Our History

Palmetto Ridge began in a one-room schoolhouse on a river bluff. Its founders were Rev. Josiah Freeman, a minister born into slavery who learned to read in secret, and Abigail Hollis Marsh, a Quaker teacher from Philadelphia.

Together they opened the Palmetto Ridge Normal & Industrial Institute in 1894 to train Black teachers for the Lowcountry's schools. Thirty-one students enrolled that first fall. Many walked miles each morning; some rowed across Cooper's Run.

Build it so it lasts, and teach so it matters.

— Rev. Josiah Freeman, 1901

Milestones

• 1894Founded with 31 students and two teachers in a borrowed church schoolhouse.
• 1902Students make 400,000 bricks by hand from river clay and build Old Main. Its clock tower still keeps time today.
• 1921Dr. Clara B. Whitfield becomes president and adds nursing and agricultural science.
• 1938Becomes Palmetto Ridge Junior College, one of South Carolina's first public two-year colleges.
• 1967Merges with Cypress Landing Junior College, a formerly all-white school across town, and becomes one integrated institution under President Lorenzo Gadsden. The star on our crest honors that day.
• 1976Hawks athletics joins the Carolinas Junior College Athletic Conference.
• 1989Hurricane Hugo badly damages Old Main. Alumni, churches and neighbors raise $3.1 million to restore it brick by brick.
• 2003President Patricia Hwang-Ellison launches the first online courses and the Veterans Success Center.
• 2019The LEED-Gold Ridgeview Campus opens. Old Main becomes the Heritage Center & Welcome Center.
• 2024The college celebrates 130 years with its largest and most diverse class ever.

Presidents of the College