ABOUT
UPSTATE ARCHIVES
OUR MISSION
Like many non-profits we exist for and thrive off of our passion for what we do, and what we do first and foremost is preserve local history. Our mission is to collect, curate, and create locally significant historical exhibits for the purposes of learning and community enrichment.
While for now our focus is primarily centered around the Greenville SC area we hope to one day expand our preservation capacity to the whole of the upstate.
The exhibits we create from bought and donated pieces of history are ones we prefer to display in appropriate public areas throughout Greenville for the community to enjoy and learn from.
OUR HISTORY
We started out with no intention of making an organization out of our love of local history, but that all changed when we went to a fateful estate sale.
There, we found items belonging to Greenville's first African American judge. Willie T. Smith Jr., who was instrumental in landmark civil rights cases, one of which ultimately ended segregated restaurants, hotels, and movie theaters in Greenville.
Knowing his legacy as a pillar of equal opportunity and his invaluable service as a public servant gave us the obligation to make sure that his items, invaluable pieces of local history, didn't go to waste.
We tried for a long time to find places that would take the items, maybe use them in an exhibit honoring his legacy, but we came to a loss, and in the process we realized just how underrepresented African American history was in Greenville.
So, we took the resources at our disposal and we did the work ourselves. We assembled the exhibit we knew the collection deserved and in the process was born the idea for an organization that could do the same thing for so many more pieces of local history that would've otherwise never seen the light of day.
