Slave Dwelling Project builds momentum in the Midlands

Had I Known 

                         See WLTX:  Man Makes it His Mission to Preserve Slave Quarters

 
Deformed and Almost Worthless

Interpretive sign in the slave cabin at the Lexington County Museum

The Lexington Museum came at this thing from a completely different angle. Most of the buildings including the two slave cabins were moved to the site from other locations. That would make this stay similar to the ones at Old Alabama Town in Montgomery, AL; Roper Mountain in Greenville, SC; and the Price House in Woodruff, SC. Unlike the previous night at the Seibels House Kitchen Dependency, this stay garnered very little fanfare, similar to previous stays at privately owned properties. When I toured the grounds with the site director and saw the slave cabins, I verified that I had been there previously performing living history in the capacity of a Civil War reenactor. The cabin was once used as an office so it had electricity but no lights, central heating and air and replicas of artifacts throughout. One impressive part of the building was one interpretive sign that listed the first names of the slaves who were once the property of the owner.

The most haunting was one interpretive sign that listed the name of one female slave and categorized her as deformed and almost worthless. I had a conversation with the gentleman that restored the cabin that I was going to sleep in that night. He expressed his fear of ghosts, but that did not deter me. I was delivered a bonus when the site director introduced me to a museum neighbor who told me about a plantation that he owns in Fairfield County, SC that has a restored slave cabin. Long story short, Lemmon Hill Plantation in Winnsboro, SC will be on the 2013 calendar of the Slave Dwelling Project. A local newspaper reporter showed up for an interview and was not impressed by my Yankee hat that went with my Yankee uniform. William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops made an impact in this area during the Civil War. During dinner at a local Bojangles’ that was located in walking distance from the museum, Old Reliable Terry James called to let me know that he would be there later that night.

As darkness descended and a full moon revealed itself, I had quality time inside the cabin alone with my thoughts to do some quality writing about the project. I now realize that based on some of the inquiries that I have gotten thus far there is great potential for the expansion of the Slave Dwelling project in 2013. Ten thirty came and Terry James had not yet shown. Thoughts of the early days of the project and how I would sleep in the dwellings alone danced through my mind. I thought of that reporter who did not like my Yankee hat and the gentleman who restored the cabin when thirty minutes after I laid down, Terry rang my phone stating he was outside. After getting Terry settled into the cabin, there would be very little conversation, his history lesson would have to wait until the next morning.

The next morning Terry took full advantage of his skill as a professional photographer. According to its brochure, “The Lexington County Museum, founded in 1970, offers a rare and unforgettable experience – the chance to see and touch a way of life gone forever. Structure and furnishings focus on the early history of Lexington County and interpret the everyday lives of its residents from ca. 1770 until the momentous changes wrought by the Civil War. The Museum complex, located right off Highway 378, encompasses seven acres of property and features 36 historic buildings.” Terry was like a kid in a candy store taking intricate shots of each building. We both wagered that each of those buildings that were built prior to the Civil War was built using some type of slave labor. And then we parted, I headed home to my family, with Terry still taking pictures of buildings.



Joseph McGill Blog Entry
Seibels Kitchen House Sleepover
Columbia, SC

By John M. Sherrer, III
Director of Cultural Resources
Historic Columbia Foundation
1601 Richland Street
Columbia, SC 29201
803.252.1770, ext. 28
jsherrer@historiccolumbia.org


On Thursday, April 5, 2012, history was made within the confines of a circa-1830 brick
kitchen house, adjacent to one of Columbia, South Carolina’s most celebrated sites –the
circa-1796 Seibels House, a landmark structure most often associated with distinguished
architecture and verdant gardens. A cast of four, led by Joseph McGill, a field officer
with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a Civil War 54th Regiment re-
enactor, crafted an unprecedented Historic Columbia Foundation experienced by virtue
of their respect for the power of preservation. As part of Mr. McGill’s on-going effort
to heighten public appreciation of and preservation advocacy for sites associated with
slavery, this experience was the 31st in his thus-far two-year endeavor. But, for all four of
us it was our first shared encounter and one that profoundly affected me as a steward of
this extraordinary structure.

Upon first inspection we all looked different – three men, one woman; three South
Carolinians, one Ohioan; three black and one white. We shared space recently afforded
by the installation of a partial floor within the building’s north chamber, a room
determined by archaeology and corroborated through oral history, to have served as
a laundry for the main house. Just to our south lay the uncovered floor of the south
chamber, a room that during slavery and for generations after was busied by the efforts of
cooks preparing meals of great variety. Overhead, bear rafters loomed where formerly a
plastered and whitewashed ceiling shielded occupants of both rooms.

Following an evening program in which Mr. McGill shared his first thirty-two
experiences with conducting sleepovers in spaces that once echoed with the sounds of
enslaved laborers, we four gathered our modest supplies for the evening. A couple of
camp stools and sleeping bags – the items of a veteran to such evenings. A rolled towel
for a pillow and a thin and short blanket for myself, gathered hurriedly earlier in the
morning but not without some thought – what should I bring that would grant me some
measure of comfort meanwhile not stripping me of the essential elements of an evening
spent in an unlit, unheated and unfurnished building? Just how comfortable should I
make myself?

Thanks to the generosity of Terry James, a co-re-enactor and friend of Mr. McGill’s, I
received the benefit of a padded moving blanket that would remove me slightly from
the hard pine floor that met us all. True to previous outings, James produced a pair of
manacles in which he slept the entire evening, as a physical reminder of the conditions
experienced by slaves during the Middle Passage and here in America during sale on the
auction block and when punished for various crimes or indiscretions. With each shift
during the evening the individual links sang out a metallic clank.

Ruth Rambo, the fourth in our group, represented a reverse migration of sorts – relocating
from Ohio to her present home of Charleston. Her presence was important for so many
reasons, not the least of which was that this structure was once the realm of women,
African-American women, from whose efforts key expectations each day during bondage
were met for their owners. Her presence made me consider each task with greater
appreciation and how work was divided between enslaved men and women. She also
exuded a sage-like presence that was simultaneously disarming and intriguing.

An overcast evening with very low clouds reflected lights beaming throughout the
downtown, casting a glow throughout the sky as if someone turned on a 15-watt bulb.
Mist persisted where thunderstorms were forecast to have struck and the thermometer
dropped considerably with the front that had moved in for the evening. With one of
the building’s two doors remaining open until 4:00 a.m., I found sleep elusive. Every
20 minutes I changed positions after the pine floor had numbed hip and shoulder to
the point of waking me up. Punctuating bouts of waking up was my contributions to a
chorus of snoring among us that surely would have been quite a concert for the very few
passersby that we had during the evening. When not met with the sound of trains and
sirens, common during certain times of the later hours, I was struck by the quietude of
the kitchen – the one place that Mr. McGill believed would have been, at times, a place
of solitude for slaves whose daily actions were both driven and monitored by owners.
On occasion the only sound discernible was the rustling of palmetto tree fronds in the
adjacent garden and along Pickens Street.

The morning began much like the evening had left off – with conversations about history,
race, slavery and preserving important sites such as the kitchen house. Most of the time I
listened, eager to hear what these three persons felt, what their personal experiences had
been and what the future might hold for the fields of history and historic preservation.
Here and there I offered what I knew about Columbia history in general, the site
specifically and what Historic Columbia Foundation had accomplished in recent years
addressing a handful of topics, including that of slavery – ultimately the institution whose
legacy brought us temporarily together on evening before a peaceful Easter weekend full
of reflection.

For me, a native Columbian, this experience with three visitors whose roots lie in the
town of Kingstree and the cities of Florence and Cincinnati struck a chord that will
resonate for some time to come. I was for those brief few hours an ambassador of the
city, an interpreter of the historic site and a watchful eye and an attentive ear for things
that went bump in the night during their stay. Experiences come in many shapes, sizes
and, in some cases, colors, but for me I recall an evening spent with kindred spirits
interested in learning more about the past while preserving the tangible elements that
make history accessible to contemporary citizens and visitors.


Cousin by Ruth Rambo

And then those men with manes covering their chins

Those men without blood

in too many cloths

Those men making ugly sounds

dancing only with their hands and arms

bringing shining plates where our faces appeared

Bringing bowls of beads that catch the light

and then throw it away

Those silly men traded all those new things for cousin

Those silly men without blood.

Cousin wasn’t Mandinga anyway.






Slave Dwelling Project
By Ruth Rambo




April 5, 2012, Seibels House (Kitchen), 1601 Richland Street, Columbia, S C

It’s 11:30 AM the next morning: grey, dank, and dreary. Yet my insides defy the
environment; they refuse to reflect the mood of the weather, my insides are flying high.
Even my body is behaving jubilantly. These old bones are not predicting rain although a
thin layer of heavenly spit sits on my hair. My back shows no evidence of its night long
encounter with a bare wooden floor as I had anticipated. The hard pine Cracker Barrel
chair feels remarkably comfortable. I surely would have predicted otherwise. No chair
no matter the level of padding would have been comfortable for the next few days or
so I had forecasted. As instructed by Zora Neale Hurston’s Mom, I have ‘jumped at the
sun.’ Didn’t ‘get there but at least I got off the ground.’

Seibels Kitchen Dependency, Submitted by Ruth Rambo

I am driving home to Charleston after a sleep-in at the partially restored brick kitchen
on the Seibels House, an urban plantation in Columbia S C. It is just one stop on Joe
McGill’s National Trust for Historic Preservation Slave Dwelling Project. He is the project
creator/coordinator and has slept in slave dwellings around the country on plantations
from Texas to Connecticut. Terry James, photographer and civil war reenactor has
accompanied Joe, also a reenactor as well as a Field Officer for the Trust, frequently
on this mission to highlight the need for preservation of all the antebellum South
relics. The party of four of slave dwellers also included John Sherrer, Director of
Cultural Resources, Historic Columbia Foundation and me, an African American history
dilettante with a lifetime interest in the American system of slavery.

Joe and Terry were already friends and enjoyed a close camaraderie. Both John and
I had met Joe but didn’t have any common experience with him and didn’t know Terry
at all. Thrown together in a very small space shifting positions or turning over had to
be carefully choreographed. John observed that during Middle Passage the spaces
were much tighter so movement was virtually impossible. My thoughts traveled from
the slaves movement restrictions of a narrow space coupled with the inability to restrict
normal bodily functions with resulting products. We had access to modern facilities
for which I was most grateful. Terry had shackled his hands so when he turned over
we heard the clanging of those chains in the night. It was a frightening and sobering
reminder of physical and psychological elements of antebellum controls. On the lighter
side when we awoke, John our host asked if we wanted coffee. The idea was heartily
welcomed. So he left the historic kitchen and returned from the ‘Big House’ carrying
a tray of juice, coffee and banana bread. We laughed at the role reversal. A possible
descendant of slave owners serving the descendants of
slaves.

Joe extends an open invitation to people interested in the topic of slavery to join him
by sharing the lodging of a slave cabin overnight. The restoration of the fine plantation
homes is a no brainer. Everyone both black and white; from the north and south wants
to vicariously experience - if just for fifteen minutes- the life style and luxuries of a
southern planter. Yet no one wants to explicitly experience the life style of an enslaved
African. Well! Almost nobody.

Last night Joe had three takers: Terry James, John Sherrer, and me, the paternal
great granddaughter of Lydia Rambo. Lydia was a slave born c. 1820 who married and
was freed by her owner Lt. Gayle Rambo and has frequently informed and guided my
life. She has been my personal symbol of strength and endurance. Throughout my life
whenever I was feeling mentally defeated or physically ill, I’d conjure up a scenario
where my great grandmother Lydia was similarly compelled to push herself to meet
exceedingly high expectations…physical goals clearly more difficult to meet than
the ones confronting me during my 20th-21st Century life. Just thinking of this slave
woman’s survival achievement, has often given me the resolve to push through extreme
fear and pain and ‘just do it’. The will to survive is strong. Although I never met her, my
G grandmother taught me that.

Of course one cold night, no matter how uncomfortable, in a brick plantation kitchen/
slave dwelling does not a slave experience replicate. What it did do is give me time and
place and circumstance to think about the real life of a slave. It stimulated me to devote
serious thought to America’s gritty public secret – an inhuman, inhumane system of
trading in human flesh- slavery. The questions flow…the questions with immediate and
obvious answers and the numberless questions without probable answers.

The first is the most apparent to me: What would America be like today culturally,
politically and economically had there been no talented, creative, abundant African
slave labor? What unrecognized role did slavery play in the supremacy of America
on the world stage? Who first envisioned slavery as the cost effective method of
developing America’s north and south east corridor? Of working the land, of building the
dwellings, of expanding the music, of raising the children?

Who were these slaves rendered 3/5th a person? Who were these slaves, the only
major group of North American émigrés who did not willingly and purposefully seek the
opportunities available on these shores? Yes! The Africans too were huddled masses
yearning to breathe free. They were also the wretched refuse of a teeming shore. The
Africans were homeless and tempest-tost. Yet here was no welcome for them….no
lifted lamp….no open nor golden door.

Who were these enslaved Africans who endured a brutal lifestyle of work from ‘kin
to kant’ (can see in the morning to can’t see at night) without becoming chronically
depressed? How did any one of them escape becoming suicidal? Who were these

slaves enduring lifetimes of hardship and deprivation yet had families, created
communities, learned to talk through many languages, danced, laughed and sang. Who
were these Africans who taught their children the many skills they had mastered- the
most vital of all- how to survive and then manipulate the system without being beaten to
death? Who were these slaves?

Who would I be, had I been a slave? Would I have been cheerful and chatty? What
skills would I have developed? Would I have run away? Would I have tried to harm my
owners? Who would I have been? And who am I now because my G G M, Lydia was
chattel.

And why, over 300 years later, does America continue to deny their contribution and the
contributions of their descendants?

Some of these questions might be answerable: others require a Sphinx. What is crystal
clear is that this remarkable slave dwelling experience was intellectually provocative
and stimulating. You should think about becoming a slave dweller.

Contact Joe McGill. You’ll become the better for it. I believe I did.

Ruth ‘Retired’ Rambo