Rock Hill – Travel Guide At Wikivoyage

History

Succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples lived in the region for thousands of years, including the historic Catawba Indian Nation, whose members live near Rock Hill and form the only tribe in South Carolina that is federally recognized. Rock Hill became a town in the mid-1800s with the arrival of a rail line through the area. According to some accounts, the engineers marked the spot on the map and named it "Rocky Hill". The first passenger train arrived in 1852, and the first Rock Hill Post Office opened a few weeks later. Now that the town had a name, a railroad station, and a post office, it began to draw more settlers to the area. The rail line is still in use for freight transport, but passenger service is not available.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, about half of Rock Hill's inhabitants were slaves, integral to local cotton production. Due to its position on the railroad, Rock Hill became a transfer point for Confederate soldiers and supplies moving to and from the front. When General Lee surrendered at the Appomattox Court House, it was a future Rock Hill resident who was responsible for waving the white flag: Captain Robert Moorman Sims, sent to inform Union troops that the Confederate troops wanted a truce.

The Civil War changed Rock Hill tremendously, like elsewhere in the South. Rock Hill grew as a town, taking in war refugees, widows and their families, and the return of the men who had left to fight the war. Town life began to become more important than rural life. When the town was incorporated in 1870, most of the merchants in Rock Hill were former Confederate soldiers; many were entrepreneurs who were new to town, trying to start over.

In 1961, Rock Hill was the setting for two significant events in the civil rights movement. In February 1961, the "Friendship Nine", a group of nine African-American men, went to jail at the York County prison farm after staging a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in downtown Rock Hill. To save money for the movement, they refused to pay bail, inspiring other civil rights groups to do the same. Later, Rock Hill was the first stop in the Deep South for a group of 13 Freedom Riders, who boarded buses in Washington, DC, and headed South to test the court ruling outlawing racial segregation in all interstate public facilities. When the civil rights leader John Lewis and another black man stepped off the bus at Rock Hill, they were beaten by a white mob that was uncontrolled by police, drawing national attention.

Rock Hill has experienced steady growth in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with the city boundary expanding far beyond its original limits.