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Plantations’ slavery exhibits hope to attract more tourists
By Dennis Quick
Staff Writer
On the 450-acre Magnolia Plantation and Gardens a row of five wooden cabins stand in disrepair, but their survival reveals the legacy of the people that once occupied the tiny structures.
Four cabins built in the 1850s were homes to slaves, and one cabin built in 1900 was home to descendents of slaves. The abandoned cabins in some cases have floorboards that are broken or ready to break under a footfall, some of the pine planks are rotted and the cabins’ whitewashed exteriors are weathered with age.
When those cabins are restored, they will tell a story about Magnolia Plantation never before told about the world-famous tourist attraction known primarily for its beautiful gardens and idyllic location on the Ashley River. That story is the story of slavery, which existed on Magnolia Plantation for some 250 years, and of black life on the plantation after the Civil War.
And it is a story that is being told at other area plantations that, it is hoped, will boost sagging tourism by attracting people, especially black tourists, to the exhibits.
Magnolia Gardens receives about 150,000 visitors annually, said Taylor Drayton Nelson, Magnolia’s managing director.
The plantation’s restored cabins will represent, or interpret, different eras of the slaves and their descendents’ lives at Magnolia, from slavery to the 20th century. One cabin will depict a slave cabin, one a freedman’s cabin, two of them gardeners’ cabins (from 1900 and 1930) and one a cabin inhabited by a family who lived on the plantation in the 1960s, Nelson said.
Vegetable and medicinal herbal gardens will be planted near the cabins. The entire setting will evoke the atmosphere in which Magnolia’s slaves and slave descendants lived, Nelson said.
Magnolia received a $100,000 grant from the Rednor, Pa.-based Annenberg Foundation to restore the cabins. Restorers will use 19th century tools and techniques to maintain the structural integrity of the cabins. The project could be completed by October 2008, Nelson said.
Although Nelson says he hopes the restoration project, titled “From Slavery to Freedom,” will draw more black tourists to Magnolia, the project is more an effort to tell a broader story of plantation life, a story that includes the slaves’ perspectives, not just those of the slave owners.
Yet attracting more black tourists to the Lowcountry is exactly what the College of Charleston’s Simon Lewis and other local educators, historical site curators and tourism professionals have in mind.
Neither the College of Charleston’s Office of Tourism Analysis nor the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau have collected data on the number of black tourists who visit the Lowcountry.
“However, based on visitor requests, we know that African-American historical sites and tours are of interest to many of our visitors,” said Perrin Lawson, the Convention and Visitors Bureau’s deputy director.
Lewis, who teaches African literature, is coordinating a number of initiatives into a collective effort encompassing the cultural, social and economic contributions enslaved West Africans made to the Lowcountry.
Titled “Rendering Things Visible,” which refers to making these contributions less obscure and more apparent to the public, the project covers a geographic corridor ranging from Georgetown to Beaufort.
Historical markers, a comprehensive Web site featuring historical data and genealogical information for blacks interested in tracing their South Carolina roots, a black family heritage center, a black heritage association and a slave memorial will be included.
To accomplish all of this, Lewis and his colleagues have applied for several grants, including a $300,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant.
“Rendering Things Visible” could be achieved in three to five years, Lewis said.
The Lowcountry, where a large percentage of enslaved West Africans entered the United States, is a historically significant region for many black Americans and should therefore have more sights to lure black tourists, he said.
At Drayton Hall, just south of Magnolia, black history is interwoven with the history of the plantation, developed by John Drayton in 1738. Visitors learn of the Bowenses, the Leaches and other black families who labored on the plantation. Tour guides give presentations on U.S. slavery and on the work slaves did at Drayton Hall. Tourists visit a cemetery containing 33 gravesites of slave descendants who lived on the plantation.
Drayton Hall, which receives about 55,000 visitors a year, also attracts archeologists who dig for slave artifacts and remnants of the plantation’s slave cabins, said George McDaniel, Drayton Hall’s director.
Presenting the life of slavery at Drayton Hall has been part of the plantation’s tourism program since the 1990s. Richmond Bowens, a slave descendant who was born at Drayton Hall in 1908, entertained and educated tourists with stories, passed down from generation to generation, about life on the plantation until his death in 1998. He is among the slave descendants buried in the plantation’s cemetery.
In five years, Drayton Hall will have an interpretive center featuring more historical exhibits about black life at the plantation, McDaniel said.
For Magnolia, Nelson envisions an interpretive center featuring interactive exhibits, artifacts and historical archives to complement the restored cabins.
“The discussion of slavery is often difficult, but it is an important topic that must be discussed openly and honestly whenever plantation life is addressed. Our knowledge and perspective about history is always changing and evolving. Enslaved Africans, and later African-Americans, were able to create a powerful and unique culture despite enslavement,” said Craig Hadley, whose company, The Living History Group, is overseeing the Magnolia project.
At Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens in Mount Pleasant, visitors can learn about Gullah culture through the performances of Sharon Murray. Dressed in 19th-century costume, Murray tells stories in the Gullah language and then translates the stories into standard English. Her performances draw between 150 and 200 spectators a day, said Max Sterling, Boone Hall’s marketing director.
Murray performs in front of a slave cabin, one of nine slave cabins at Boone Hall. The cabins date back to the 1790s. All but two of the cabins contain pottery and other artifacts from the slavery era. Boone Hall offers guided tours along “Slave Street,” where the cabins are located.
At Middleton Place in West Ashley, the slavery exhibits are located primarily in the plantation’s stable yards, where enslaved Africans worked as blacksmiths, weavers, carpenters and other artisans. Tour guides interpret the artisan shops for visitors and discuss slavery on the plantation. The site includes an antebellum chapel where slaves worshipped and where visitors can listen to recorded spirituals. The plantation’s restored freedman’s cabin contains slavery exhibits as well, said Clinton Noren, Middleton’s stable yard interpretive coordinator.
Middleton Place also includes a rice field where visitors learn how slaves planted Carolina Gold rice and where that crop is still planted at one end of the field.
In 1998, when Noren began working at Middleton Place, few black tourists visited the plantation, which annually receives between 80,000 and 85,000 visitors. Since 2001, when Middleton Place started its slavery exhibits, more black tourists began visiting Middleton Place.
“Now it’s rare that we don’t have African-Americans on tours,” Noren said.
Efforts to attract more black tourists to Lowcountry plantations “have snowballed over the last three or four years,” Noren added.
Simon and local plantation directors would like to see all of the area’s slavery exhibits connected to the International African-American Museum to be built in downtown Charleston. Shuttle buses could take visitors from the museum to the different plantations and other historical sites, Simon said.
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