Qualla: Rock Hill, South Carolina

Rock Hill, South Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On January 31, 1961, nine young men from Friendship Junior College walked into the McCrory's variety store in downtown Rock Hill, sat down at the whites-only lunch counter, and asked to be served. They were arrested. At the courthouse the next morning, they were offered the choice the sit-in movement had been quietly debating for a year: pay the fine and walk out, or refuse and go to jail. They refused. "Jail, no bail," the slogan went. The Friendship Nine spent thirty days breaking rocks on a York County chain gang. Their convictions were vacated in 2015. A circle of stools at the old McCrory's lunch counter, now Kounter Restaurant, is engraved with their names. Rock Hill is a city of about 75,000 in the South Carolina piedmont, twenty-five miles south of Charlotte. It is also that.

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Rock Hill, South Carolina: A Catawba River Town

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hlecroy, CC BY-SA 3.0. Rock Hill takes its name from a flint outcrop the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad surveyors hit in the 1850s while running their line south from Charlotte. The town incorporated in 1870 after three tries - members of the White family, who owned a large share of what would b...

Image: Hlecroy | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rock Hill, South Carolina: The Friendship Nine

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Kalasnik from Fort Mill, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sit-ins had been sweeping the South for a year by January 1961 - Greensboro had started the wave on February 1, 1960, and Nashville and Atlanta and Charleston had all followed. Most demonstrators paid their fines and walked free, which protest organizers worried sent the wrong me...

Image: Mike Kalasnik from Fort Mill, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Rock Hill, South Carolina: Old Town and the Civitas

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sto500, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk through downtown Rock Hill today and the city's reinvention is on every block. At the gateway to Old Town stand four bronze statues called the Civitas, twenty-two feet tall, sculpted by Audrey Flack in 1991. Each figure holds a disc representing one aspect of the city's econ...

Image: Sto500 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rock Hill, South Carolina: Football City and the Catawba

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Herr Sturmfest, CC BY-SA 3.0. Rock Hill calls itself "Football City USA" because of how many NFL players it has produced per capita - Stephon Gilmore, Jadeveon Clowney, Mason Rudolph, Cordarrelle Patterson, and many more came out of South Pointe, Northwestern, and Rock Hill High schools. In 2019 the Carolina ...

Image: Herr Sturmfest | CC BY-SA 3.0