Interpreting the African American Experience on Charleston County

INTERPRETING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE ON CHARLESTON COUNTY PLANTATIONS by RENEE’ ANITA DONNELL (Under the Direction of Cari Goetcheus) ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on the interpretation of the African American experience on historic plantations in Charleston County South Carolina. The focus is on understanding the definition and components of site interpretation, as well as the role of Historic Site Managers and Site Interpreters, and their standards. Boone Hall Plantation, Drayton Hall, the McLeod Plantation, and the Hampton Plantation are all case studies for this thesis. Each is owned by different organizations and has different African American resources available to them on site. The stated intentions of the Historic Site Managers and Site Interpreters is compared here with the actual experience of visiting each site and, if they prove necessary, suggested changes are discussed. In essence, this is an advocacy effort for a more thorough interpretation of the slave experience on historic Charleston plantations. Index Words: Charleston County plantations, site interpretation, Historic Site Managers, African American site interpretation, Boone Hall Plantation, Drayton Hall, Hampton Plantation, McLeod Plantation. INTERPRETING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE ON CHARLESTON COUNTY PLANTATIONS by RENEE’ ANITA DONNELL BSS International Studies, Bethune-Cookman University, 2012 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION ATHENS, GEORGIA 2014 © 2014 Renee’ Anita Donnell All Rights Reserved INTERPRETING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE ON CHARLESTON COUNTY PLANTATIONS. by RENEE’ ANITA DONNELL Major Professor: Cari Goetcheus Committee: Wayde Brown Valerie Babb Joseph McGill Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 201 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Cari Goetcheus for believing in me and pushing me to keep going. The improved writer that I am today is all thanks to your guidance. I would also like to thank the Institute of African American Studies at the University of Georgia for helping to fund my trip to visit my case studies. I would also like to thank my parents and “sister” for keeping me encouraged and not being annoyed every time I listed my daily plans just doing thesis work. Thanks especially to my mom for not letting me quit school after first semester. I did it mom! 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 METHODOLOGY ….……………………………………………………………5 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................... 11 HISTORIC SITE MANAGER ............................................................................. 11 SITE INTERPRETATION ................................................................................... 23 HISTORY OF INTERPRETING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE ................................................................................ 38 CONTEXTUAL HISTORY OF CHARLESTON COUNTY ............................. 47 PLANTATIONS AND AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE ....................... 57 3 CASE STUDIES ......................................................................................................... 69 BOONE HALL PLANTATION…………………………………………………72 DRAYTON HALL ......………………………………………………..….......... 85 MCLEOD PLANTATION…………………...………………………………….95 HAMPTON PLANTATION……………………………..…………………….104 4 ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS ..................................................................................... 115 5 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 128 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 136 5 LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: Population figures for Charleston.................................................................................. 53 Figure 2: Agricultural crops across southeast before Civil War ................................................... 58 Figure 3: Farm size by acre across the south on eve of Civil War ............................................... 59 Figure 4: United States slave population in 1810 ......................................................................... 62 Figure 5: United States slave population in 1820 ......................................................................... 62 Figure 6: United States slave population in 1830 ......................................................................... 63 Figure 7: Map of Boone Hall Plantation ....................................................................................... 75 Figure 8: Row of Boone Hall plantation slave cabins .................................................................. 77 Figure 9: Archeological cabin display case with slave tags ......................................................... 79 Figure 10: Slave fingerprint in brick ............................................................................................. 80 Figure 11: Boone Hall Plantation smokehouse ............................................................................. 81 Figure 12: Site map of Drayton Hall ............................................................................................. 87 Figure 13: “What would you do?” station .................................................................................... 94 Figure 14: McLeod Plantation slave cabins ................................................................................ 103 Figure 15: Site map of Hampton Plantation ............................................................................... 106 Figure 16: Place inscription of archeological dig ....................................................................... 109 Figure 17: Wall display example for Hampton Plantation ......................................................... 112 Figure 18: Interpretive standards chart ....................................................................................... 122 Figure 19: Interpretive methods chart ......................................................................................... 126 Figure 20: Interpretive topics chart ............................................................................................. 127 6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “What is preserved is a function of what society thinks is important to it now, and to future generations.” ~Antoinette Lee It is very important to accurately interpret the African American experience on plantations, not solely in Charleston County, but across the Southeast, for several reasons. Often most of the focus of the site is on the owner of the site, the architecture of his house, and maybe the owner’s family. In addition to the owner, however, there were also slaves, and overseers who lived and worked in unison on the site. Within these three groups were a variety of families, social stratifications, and chains of hierarchy, each contributing to the function and complexity of the plantation. Would it not add power and authenticity to the description of a site if its story were to include everyone who lived there? In the past, the flourishing economy of the southeastern United States depended largely on the institution of slavery. It was the workers in the houses and fields who made their owner’s properties successful, and who provided the labor to grow crops and provide services, and working long brutal hours to do so. We cannot allow the slave story to go untold when they provided a large region of the nascent nation with its economic backbone, free labor, and had significant cultural impacts by introducing new musical styles and new methods of religious worship. Historic sites are physical places that often have the visual resources to powerfully describe the past and to remind us of what life was like long ago. For me, sites with African American history are a reminder of how far we have come in the last 150 years. How can visitors to historic sites truly understand what life was like on a given site if only one of its many stories is being told or visually emphasized? In school textbooks, students may only briefly touch on the existence of American minorities, while the predominant focus is on the white American or 1 European immigrant experience. Would it not be more effective, let alone more accurate, if historic sites were to pick up where history books left off, fill the gap and equally acknowledge the contributions of all groups who lived and worked at a historic site? Even historic sites with limited physical resources have the capacity to provide visitors with a basic understanding of what took place on the site, who lived there and what they did. This thesis will explore the interpretation of the African American experience on Charleston County historic plantations that existed between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. It will point to the limitations of many current interpretations of plantation life and suggest ways to provide a more accurate account to visitors of these historic sites. I was first

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