International African American Museum: Shedding Light on Charleston’s Untold History

Charleston’s International African American Museum is set to join a growing list of museums dedicated to black history, addressing a narrative long overdue. Charleston, South Carolina, is an idyllic slice of old-school Americana. Grand side porches extend along Italianate-style homes, while sandy beaches provide unparalleled access to the Atlantic Ocean.

However, beneath the area’s oldest foundations lurks a darker history – one that is often overlooked yet permanently sewn into the fabric of both Charleston and the nation. Soon, that history will finally come to light.

An Untold History in Charleston

In 1619, around 20 captive Africans landed in America, marking the start of a slave trade that lasted nearly 250 years. Slavery became the foundation on which the nation built its colossal wealth, with Charleston at its epicenter. Approximately 80% of African Americans can potentially trace an ancestor to Charleston before being sold into bondage – a statistic more culturally significant than New York’s Ellis Island, where around 40% of white Americans trace their ancestry.

Unlike Ellis Island, a must-see destination with a museum and database for tracking lineage, there’s little in Charleston memorializing the region’s relationship to the African American experience.

The International African American Museum

The much-anticipated International African American Museum (IAAM) aims to enrich Charleston’s narrative. Located at Gadsden’s Wharf, which historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. calls “ground zero for the African American experience,” the museum will memorialize the bravery, tenacity, and strength of those who entered America through Charleston.

The IAAM will become part of a burgeoning movement in America to appropriately represent black history. Since the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, in 2016 and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2018, the importance of such institutions has been increasingly recognized.

Joy Bivins, Chief Curator of the IAAM, states, “Charleston takes its history seriously, and in many ways, history is a main reason people visit this city. I believe the museum will offer proper respect and homage to the Africans and their descendants who were so influential in building this city.”

Connecting to Ancestral Heritage

Integral to the IAAM is the Center for Family History, which will link African Americans to their ancestral heritage before 1870, the first year former slaves had both first and last names listed in the US Census. Bivins explains, “There is an exhibit within the Center that focuses on the challenges faced by people of African descent when researching their family histories.” The IAAM aims to become an indispensable resource for uncovering ancestry often shrouded in difficulty.

Addressing Historical Monuments

James Baldwin, the late author and Civil Rights activist, stated, “If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.” Unfortunately, this fundamental truth about Charleston’s history of slavery is often obscured by monuments that fail to represent the city’s legacy of racial inequality.

Surprisingly, of the 95,000 entries in America’s National Register of Historic Places, only 2% focus on black Americans, with a mere handful commemorating the slave trade. In contrast, nearly 1,800 monuments honor the Confederacy across the United States, with South Carolina housing 175 of these monuments.

Many find this lack of representation disheartening, including Bivins herself, who advocates for more monuments to honor the contributions of African Americans to the history of Charleston and the nation.

Monuments in South Carolina

On Sullivan’s Island, about 10 miles from downtown Charleston, two memorials honor the enslaved people quarantined on the island between 1700 and 1775 before being sold in the city. A roadside plaque erected in 1990 and a simple six-foot bench dedicated by the Toni Morrison Society in 2008 both serve as reminders, albeit overshadowed by the island’s multimillion-dollar vacation homes.

Toni Morrison poignantly remarked in a 1989 interview that there is “no suitable memorial” honoring slaves in America. Nearly 20 years later, that lack of representation inspired the installation of her six-foot bench on Sullivan’s Island. Although it is not the final destination on the road to representation, it serves as a physical embodiment of hope that the area’s old ports will become entryways for understanding. Bivins observes that Morrison’s focus on centering black experiences informs the purpose of the IAAM.

The Long Road to the IAAM

Joe Riley, Mayor of Charleston from 1975 to 2016, initially proposed the idea for the museum in his 2000 State of the City Address. Unlike Morrison’s bench, which cost $5,000, the IAAM was budgeted at $75 million. After two decades of state-funding setbacks and inflation adjustments, the price tag increased to nearly $100 million. Finally, with the support of over 2,000 donors, the IAAM broke ground in October 2019, with hopes to open in late 2021. Bivins remarks, “When you are building something, of course, you have fears; I just choose not to dwell in that place.”

The IAAM not only promises to be a cultural institution but also represents economic hope for South Carolina. A study by the University of South Carolina’s SmartState Center of Economic Excellence in Tourism estimates that a 5% increase in African American tourists could inject $118 million into the state’s economy. By fostering a center for education and understanding, the IAAM will attract a demographic that has historically felt unwelcome in Charleston.

Notably, half of the out-of-state African Americans surveyed expressed reluctance to visit South Carolina due to fears of discrimination. In contrast, many showed a clear interest in visiting a destination like the IAAM rather than popular tourist spots like plantations. Recent findings from Mandala Research highlight a significant increase in the economic value of African American travelers from $48 billion to $63 billion between 2010 and 2018, underscoring the importance of cultural and heritage attractions in travel decision-making.