34.4348° N, 81.0284° W
CHARLESTON
Most Famous People Born in Charleston, United States
- Notable people
- 749
- Peak decade
- 1940s
- Median birth year
- 1920
- Most distinctive
- Baseball 4.5×
Charleston's profile is frozen in antebellum amber: an outsized Lawyer and Judge class built by the planter bar that dominated South Carolina politics from secession through Reconstruction, with an Officer bench propped up by the Citadel and the Confederate officer corps. The smaller, stranger note is the Novelist thread — Charleston Renaissance writers like DuBose Heyward, whose Porgy became the seed for American opera.
One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Charleston during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1940s with 63 notable births.
What Charleston Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Politician is Charleston's biggest profession — 22% of all notables (166).
Charleston over-indexes on baseball — 4.5× the global rate.
Charleston under-produces writer — only 0.6× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Charleston's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Politics & Law
- Sports
- Film & TV
- Music
- Writing
- Science
- Other
- Filtered to 1920s Clear ×
George Armitage Miller
1920 - 2012
George Crumb
Born 1929
Dale Bumpers
1925 - 2016
Fritz Hollings
1922 - 2019
Douglas Dick
1920 - 2015
Thomas J. J. Altizer
1927 - 2018
Sidney Rittenberg
1921 - 2019
Leon Sullivan
1922 - 2001
Kenny Rollins
1923 - 2012
James L. Holloway III
1922 - 2019
Jean Carson
1923 - 2005
Arthur Ravenel Jr.
Born 1927
Robert Drasnin
1927 - 2015
Elsa Raven
1929 - 2020
Alice Baber
1928 - 1982
George King (basketball, born 1928)
1928 - 2006
Paul M. Doty
1920 - 2011
H-Bomb Ferguson
1929 - 2006
William Hoffman (author)
1925 - 2009
Walter F. Murphy
1929 - 2010
Charles Peters
Born 1926
Merton Simpson
1928 - 2013
Clay Matthews Sr.
1928 - 2017
Paul Washington
1921 - 2002
Dick Huffman
1923 - 1992
Burnet R. Maybank Jr.
1924 - 2016
E. Henry Knoche
1925 - 2010
James R. Fair
1920 - 2010
Herbert Fielding
1923 - 2015
John Adams (offensive lineman)
1921 - 1969
Elías L. Rivers
1924 - 2013
John Thomas Copenhaver Jr.
Born 1925
John Hopper
1923 - 1996
Anne Gamble Kennedy
1920 - 2001
Elizabeth Virginia Hallanan
1925 - 2004
John Cannady
1923 - 2002
George Hughes Revercomb
1929 - 1993
Otis Davis (baseball)
1920 - 2007
Falcon Black Hawkins Jr.
1927 - 2005
Joseph H. McGee Jr.
Born 1929
John A. Cade
1929 - 1996
Eddie Shokes
1920 - 2002
Jim Champion
Born 1926
Tom Blake (American football)
Born 1927
Ivor F. Boiarsky
1920 - 1971
Carlos Talbott
1920 - 2015
Arthur Rose Sr.
1921 - 1995
J. Palmer Gaillard Jr.
1920 - 2006
Sonny Moran
1926 - 2016
Della Hardman
1922 - 2005
Eivind Johansen
1927 - 2012