A historic rice plantation today is a place of contradictions. It's beauty is undeniable, with its lush gardens, moss-draped live oaks, scenic waterways and beautifully built residences. Many of these old plantation sites have been converted into public spaces where history is interpreted and conveyed to visitors.
So while we admire the aesthetic qualities of these places, we can't help but consider what happened in the rice fields, the master's house, the slave cabins, the burial grounds. The soil has soaked up plenty of blood and tears. A visit, therefore, can provoke an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.
Walk through the carefully cultivated gardens, admiring the camellias and azaleas, and remember that they were tended by enslaved people. View the remnants of the rice fields and know that they were created and maintained by Africans, many of whom died young because of the intensive labor required. Marvel at the riches inside the house — the furniture, silverware, art — and consider that they are a reflection of the wealth made possible only because of the institution of slavery.
View the graveyards and note the difference between where members of the White planter family are buried and where the Black people were laid to rest. Visits to historic plantations, therefore, can be an eye-opening and valuable experience. Indigo-dyed yarn hangs out to dry at Middleton Place in May 2024.
Up Ashley River Road you'll find Middleton Place , a nonprofit foundation, which offers more than scenic views and tours. It also organizes public events, manages a stableyard with live animals, conducts research, hosts patrons who stay at an on-site hotel, feeds visitors at its restaurant, and sells plants and other gardening products. But you don't have to go far to encounter the legacy of slavery there.
It's integrated into much of Middleton Place's historical interpretation. Drayton Hall , owned by the National Trust and managed by the local nonprofit Drayton Hall Preservation Trust, also provides tours and hosts events and exhibits. It boasts a main house designed in the Palladian style.
The privately-owned Magnolia Plantation and Gardens features a row of slave cabins, tours, boat rides through one of the former rice fields, garden walks and more. Find Joseph McGill there and listen to him describe his Slave Dwelling Project . At McLeod Plantation , a former sea island cotton plantation operated by the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission, the tours it offers only consider slavery.
It's located just over the Wappoo Creek Bridge on James Island, and its proximity to the salt water of Charleston Harbor and the ocean precluded it from cultivating rice. The tour guides are expert at sharing what they know. McLeod Plantation is a member of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience .
Azaleas in bloom at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in 2021. Boone Hall Plantation , located in Mount Pleasant, also is a private property and features a magnificent avenue of oaks, rose garden and working farm. Additionally, the site organizes an annual oyster roast and strawberry festival.
There, you can visit the nine slave quarters, which have been adapted to show specific time frames and different aspects of Black daily life at the time. About an hour's drive up U.S.
Highway 17 is Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet. Many go to enjoy the large collection of sculptures. They can also walk through an area that once was a slave village and consider what was required to cut through an old-growth cypress tree (these trees had to be removed from what once was a swamp in order to create a rice field).
Brookgreen Gardens offers a variety of special programming, as well. Hampton Plantation is located in a rural stretch north of McClellanville. Once upon a time it was a significant producer of Carolina Gold rice.
It features an interesting big house, two miles of walking trails and an enormous live oak that likely predates the colonial period. Hopsewee Plantation , near Georgetown, is the birthplace of Thomas Lynch Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
The 18th-century home overlooking the North Santee River is furnished with antiques, and though it is a private residence, it is open for tours. These sites would not exist but for enslaved Africans and their descendants. They are the ones who built the structures, pruned the flora, created the rice fields.
They are the ones who had the knowledge and the capability, both intellectual and physical, to make the work possible, and to ensure a steady income for their White overseers. In a sense, then, the plantations are monuments to Black ingenuity, courage and persistence..
