Robert Smalls was a Beaufort slave who hijacked a Confederate steamship, disguised himself as a white captain, and sailed to the Union-controlled enclave in Beaufort–Port Royal–Hilton Head area safety.
William Gilmore Simms was a poet, novelist, and historian who wrote History of South Carolina (1842), which became a standard school textbook on the state’s history.
Modjeska Monteith Simkins was an African American civil rights activist who was the Secretary of the NAACP in South Carolina and helped write the court case for Briggs v. Elliott.