04/25/2026
On Monday, May 4 from 4 to 6 pm at the Mary Street Transit Center Public Transit Advocates with Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit will commemorate the 159th. Anniversary of Mary Bowers winning the right of all Charleston residents, regardless of color, to ride the city's horse drawn street cars in 1867. After the outreach and commemoration, the transit advocates and public will walk to a nearby restaurant for drinks and dinner.
Signup to help with the outreach at https://www.mobilize.us/lowcountryupisgoodpac/event/945488/
Advocates will greet transit riders at the busy Mary Street Transit center at 80 Mary Street to thank them for exercising their right to ride and handing out information on the latest gain in the right of Lowcountry residents to improve their quality of life, the extension of the CARTA Beach reach shuttle for this summer to include service on Fridays in addition to the previous weekend and summer holiday service won five yeas ago.
Mary Bowers, an African American woman, demanded the right to ride Charleston's streetcars in April 1867 after being refused at the streetcar stop on Meeting Street, just South of Calhoun after attending the organizing mass meeting of the SC Republican Party on Marion Sqare. The Republicans were then an African American dominated reconstruction era political organization. Mary later filed a written petition with General Scott, commander of the US army of occupation in Charleston describing the incident and demanding her right to ride. General Scott (later reconstruction Governor of the State of SC and the State's first Republican Governor informed the Streetcar Company that they should open the cars to all to avoid his having to put federal troops on them to force integration. The Streetcar company agreed on May 3. On May 4 everyone in Charleston received the right to ride on an equal basis.
These incidents were part of a larger campaign of protests in spring 1867 which included other attempts to board the cars and a large demonstration at the Four Corners of Law which included a standoff between the City's Police Guard (mostly former Confederate soldiers and African American Federal Troops from the Army of Occupation. We have not yet found out who resolved that confrontation peacefully.
A detailed account of the entire streetcar campaign of 1867 in Charleston can be found in Voices of Black South Carolina by Damon Fordham, 2009, pp. 28 - 33. None of the locations of this remarkable history are identified with historic markers.
The Mary Street Transit Center, now planned to be upgraded, connects 10 CARTA bus lines (10, 11, 213, 30, 31, 33, 40, & 41 with service on the 210 and 20 on meeting street a few steps away). The 210, 1, 2 and 3 also stop nearby. Over 100 local thousand transit rides a month begin or end in this area.
On Summer weekends those wanting to go to the beach can reach the stop for the free beach reach shuttle on the #40 Mount Pleasant Bus, which begins it's outbound run at the Mary Street Transit Center.
For more information on this and other opportunities to fight fo your right to ride, contact William Hamilton of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit at [email protected] or (843) 870-5299.
