Sumter Today: The First Black Chief Justice of S.C.'s Supreme Court, Honored in Mayesville

Ernest A. Finney Jr. came to South Carolina when he was young. After getting an education and law degree, he moved to Sumter and began a full-time practice in 1960, specializing in civil rights advocacy and defense. However, the real journey that changed the state's course began one year later.

"When the Friendship Nine were arrested at McCrory's in Rock Hill, South Carolina, to stage a sit-in at the [whites only] lunch counter, my father, James T. McCain, drove to Sumter to convince then-attorney Finney to go back to Rock Hill to represent those young men and to get them out of the jail," said Jim McCain Jr., Sumter County Council chairman. "The rest is history."

Sumter Today is presented by the Sumter Opera House, University of South Carolina Sumter, and Prisma Health Tuomey Hospital.