This placard memorializes General WilliamTecumseh Sherman's Special Field Orders No. 15, which would eventually become known as the "Forty Acres and a Mule" promise. In January 1865, Sherman met with 20 black ministers at his headquarters, now known…
These slave cabins at McLeod Plantation date to the early 19th century. After emacipation, they still housed blacks, and did so for many years thereafter, til around 1990 (not a misprint).
McLeod Plantation today is an important preserved Gullah/Geechee heritage site that presents in equal part the stories of the whites and blacks who lived there. The main house is not the focal point of the tour. This display which welcomes visitors…
Drayton Hall, located on the Ashley River, is a preserved platation home. They offer a program called "Connections: From Africa to America" before the main guided tour begins, the only direct part of the Drayton Hall tour that addresses slavery.
At Drayton Hall, this is one of the oldest African American cemeteries still in use; it dates to the 1790s. Here lie at least 40 people, with both marked and unmarked graves. It was dedicated as a memorial in 2010, and the wrought-iron arch was…
This display discusses the separation of space in the yard at the Nathaniel Russell House. A fence would have literally divided the formal pleasure garden from the rear utilitarian spaces.
This display is a continuation of the exhibit on the lives of the enslaved that began in the waiting area of the house. This is not part of the guided tour, however.
The yard would have been the main arena for the slaves of Nathaniel Russel. The "dependencies," or outbuildings where they lived and worked would have been located within this space.
Although the guided tour does not focus much, if at all, on slavery, the waiting area before the tour has a small exhibit about slave life in the Nathaniel Russel House, including this display.