South Carolina

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

Long before European contact, the land now called South Carolina was home to several major Native American nations. The Cherokee controlled the northwestern mountains and foothills, while the Catawba held the central Piedmont along the Catawba River. The coastal Lowcountry was dominated by the Yamasee, the Sewee, and the Edisto, among others. The Spanish attempted a settlement at Santa Elena on Parris Island in 1566, but it was abandoned by 1587. Permanent European colonization began in earnest with the English, who founded Charleston (originally Charles Town) in 1670 as the capital of the Carolina colony. The city quickly became the entry point for English planters from Barbados, who brought enslaved Africans and a sugar-and-rice plantation model that would define the Lowcountry economy for two centuries.

The 18th century saw a massive forced migration of enslaved Africans, primarily from the rice-growing regions of present-day Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Angola. By 1720, enslaved people already outnumbered white colonists in the Lowcountry. This population concentrated on rice and indigo plantations along the Cooper, Ashley, and Santee Rivers, and on the sea islands around Beaufort and Hilton Head. The Gullah Geechee culture — a distinct African-American ethnic group with preserved language, foodways, and crafts — emerged directly from this forced migration and remains centered in the Lowcountry today.

After the American Revolution, the Upcountry opened to white settlement. The Scots-Irish, who had been migrating through Pennsylvania and down the Great Wagon Road, poured into the Piedmont starting in the 1760s and 1770s. They settled in the rolling hills around Greenville, Spartanburg, and Anderson, establishing small farms and a fiercely independent, Presbyterian-influenced culture distinct from the Anglican planter elite of Charleston. German immigrants, mostly from Pennsylvania, also arrived in smaller numbers, settling in the Dutch Fork region between the Broad and Saluda Rivers near present-day Columbia.

The Civil War and Reconstruction devastated the state’s economy and reshaped its population. Emancipation created a free Black population of roughly 400,000 by 1865, but the sharecropping and tenant farming systems that replaced slavery kept most Black families in rural poverty. The Great Migration (1910–1970) saw hundreds of thousands of Black South Carolinians leave for Northern industrial cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, reducing the state’s Black population share from 58% in 1900 to about 30% by 1970. Meanwhile, white in-migration was minimal during this period; the state remained poor and agricultural, with little to attract outsiders until the mid-20th century.

World War II and the Cold War brought the first significant modern in-migration. The U.S. military established major bases — Fort Jackson in Columbia, Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, and the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island — drawing military families from across the country. The Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons facility built near Aiken in the 1950s, brought thousands of engineers and technicians, many from the Northeast and Midwest. These installations planted the seeds of a more diverse, less insular population, but the state remained overwhelmingly native-born and biracial (white and Black) through 1960.

Modern era (post-1965)

The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act had a relatively muted effect on South Carolina compared to states like Texas or California. The state’s foreign-born population remains just 3.1% — the fourth-lowest in the U.S. — and immigration has been modest. The most visible post-1965 immigrant group has been Hispanic, primarily from Mexico and Central America, drawn by construction, landscaping, poultry processing, and agriculture. Hispanic communities have grown fastest in the Upstate, particularly around Greenville and Greer, where the BMW and Michelin plants created manufacturing jobs, and in the Lowcountry around Charleston, where tourism and hospitality demand labor. The Hispanic share of the state’s population reached 7.1% by 2024, up from just 1.3% in 1990.

East and Southeast Asian communities, comprising 1.1% of the population, are smaller and more concentrated. Vietnamese refugees arrived after 1975, settling in Charleston and Columbia, often working in fishing, nail salons, and small retail. A smaller Korean community exists in the same cities, centered on Christian churches and small businesses. Indian-subcontinent residents (0.6% of the population) are a more recent arrival, mostly professionals in medicine, engineering, and information technology, concentrated in the suburbs of Greenville and Columbia near hospitals and corporate campuses.

The most transformative demographic force since 1965 has been domestic migration — the Sun Belt shift. Starting in the 1970s and accelerating after 2000, white retirees and professionals from the Northeast and Midwest have moved to the coast, driving explosive growth in Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head, and the Charleston suburbs. The Upstate, particularly Greenville and Spartanburg, has attracted younger families and corporate transplants drawn by lower taxes, lower housing costs, and a booming manufacturing sector anchored by BMW, Michelin, and Boeing. This in-migration has made South Carolina one of the fastest-growing states in the Southeast, but it has also created a cultural divide: the native-born population, especially in rural counties, remains heavily white and Black, while the coastal and Upstate metro areas are becoming more diverse and more politically moderate.