“C” is for College of Charleston

“C” is for College of Charleston. In 1785 the General Assembly passed an act creating a college “in or near the city of Charleston.” The institution struggled and in the early nineteenth century functioned as a college preparatory school. In 1837 the institution became a publicly funded city college. The college barely survived the Civil War, but in the first decades of the twentieth century a modern institution emerged. In 1949, by agreement of public and school officials, the College of Charleston returned to private status to avoid racial integration. In 1970 shaky finances induced college officials to negotiate the transfer of the college to the state of South Carolina. In the twenty-first century, with a campus that includes more than one hundred buildings and a student body of some 12,000, the College of Charleston enjoyed an enhanced reputation.