Lamar, South Carolina

Lamar, in southern Darlington County, began in the eighteen fifties as a farming crossroads called The Devil's Woodyard, then Mim's Crossroads, then briefly Lisbon. In eighteen eighty-six it took the name Lamar, honoring Senator Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar of Mississippi, and was formally chartered in eighteen ninety as the railroad arrived. The town remained small and agricultural.

Then on March third, nineteen seventy, Lamar entered the national record for one of the most violent acts of anti-desegregation resistance in South Carolina's history. A mob of one hundred fifty to two hundred white men and women, armed with ax handles, bricks, and chains, attacked two school buses delivering Black students to the newly integrated Lamar schools. They overturned both buses and smashed the windows while students were still inside.

One hundred fifty highway patrolmen responded; tear gas was fired. Forty rioters were charged, and three received jail time.