The Hampton County Jail is a unique surviving example of a small, late nineteenth-century, dual purpose county correctional facility whose architecture reflects various alterations during its one hundred-year history. Perhaps its most unusual feature is its infamous second floor “triple-lockdown” cage complex that originally housed Hampton County’s black male inmates. The Hampton County Jail is notable as a government facility designed and used to enforce the racial segregation policies and inequalities of the American South in its administration of local justice during the period following Reconstruction and well into the twentieth century, as well as for its notoriety in employing South Carolina’s only female jailer (and second female jailer in South Carolina’s history) for a twenty-year period during the mid-twentieth century.

The Hampton County Jail was listed in the National Register by the National Park Service on June 23, 2011. The full text of the nomination and additional photos are available at the SCDAH.