2216 Washington Street
2216 Washington StreetSite of Matthew J. Perry Boyhood Home
Federal District Judge, World War II veteran and civil rights activist Matthew J. Perry spent his childhood in Waverly, where his mother, Jennie Lyles Perry, moved the family following his father’s death. A Booker T. Washington High School and S.C. State College graduate, Perry earned the nickname “Chief Counsel” while arguing civil rights cases, including the 1962 Gantt v. Clemson College, which desegregated the state-supported school. President Gerald Ford nominated Perry to the U.S. Court of Military Appeals in 1975, and President Jimmy Carter appointed him U.S. district judge for South Carolina in 1979, making Perry the first black federal district judge in the state.
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Matthew J. Perry, undated. Image courtesy John H. McCray Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia
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Site of Matthew J. Perry Boyhood Home, 2018. Historic Columbia collection
