Charleston was once the most active marketplace for enslaved people in North America. While incoming Africans were usually sold from the decks of the vessels that brought them here, enslaved people who already lived and worked in the South Carolin...
The entry of more than 150,000 African captives into the port of Charleston before the year 1808 forms one of the most important themes in the history of this community, but there are many local details about this international traffic in human ca...
Indigo—both as a plant and a dye—forms an important chapter in the early history of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Although its memory flourishes today in conversations and artistic expressions, lingering misconceptions have distorted our general ...
To commemorate the 236th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Charleston, let’s take a close look at the legal document that defined the new municipality. Our focus isn’t politics or policy, however, but spelling. The city’s 1783 charte...
Baseball was young and a novelty across the nation in the summer of 1869. Charlestonians had only recently embraced the game, which provided a relaxing way to escape the city’s oppressively tense political climate. When sport, music, and racial po...
During the first half of 1869, the people of Charleston swooned rapturously over the arrival of the latest mechanical sensation called the velocipede. This precursor to the modern bicycle was heralded locally and around the globe as a revolution i...
In a short span of time during an international war, the South Carolina legislature enacted a succession of laws related to the policing of urban Charleston. It was a confusing period of law enforcement experimentation during a crucial era in the ...
On the Fourth of July, our nation commemorates the anniversary of the ratification of the fundamental document in the long history of the United States. On that date in 1776, our Continental Congress, a loose confederation of “united colonies” mee...
In 2018, the Palmetto Society invited me to deliver a speech at White Point Garden to commemorate the 242nd anniversary of the Battle of Sullivan’s Island, which took place on the 28th of June, 1776. For this year’s celebration of that historic da...
CCPL’s newest branch, located near the banks of the Wando River in Mount Pleasant, stands within a scenic neighborhood endowed with a rich but invisible history. Formerly occupied by Native Americans who disappeared more than three centuries ago, ...
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