Honoring Juneteenth in the Low Country

This Juneteenth, I’m in Hilton Head, South Carolina with family. 

Growing up in the South myself -- in an entirely white family, mostly white school systems and in a country that seems determined to forget its history -- I didn’t learn much about what happened on Hilton Head Island and nearby Beaufort. These are places with a deep history of resistance, bravery and resilience.

Here's what I'm learning about the low country:

- Between 1730 and 1739 20,000 enslaved Africans were kidnapped and brought to South Carolina to work in rice and cotton fields.

- Enduring horrific conditions they also maintained aspects of their own their own culture and language “Gullah” - a creole of the oppressor’s English and the Krio language of Sierra Leone.

- South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union — only one month and 14 days days after Lincoln was elected -- citing the north’s violation or half-hearted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Acts, tolerating abolitionist agitation, and electing a president who would abolish slavery.

- Hilton Head was the largest camp for Union Soldiers in the South. 40,000 lived here during four years of the Civil War - the same number of people who live on the Island today.

- Two months later, the “Port Royal” experiment began and was the first major attempt to reconstruct the Southern political and economic system. I’m sitting one mile from Mitchelville - the first self-governed freedmen’s town in America. Where 1500 formerly enslaved people opened businesses, built homes, opened churches…and received wages for their work.

- In 1862, a 23-year-old enslaved man named Robert Smalls stole the Confederate steamer ship he was employed on, gathered his friends and family and sailed through two Confederate check-points to deliver the ship (and his family) safely to the Union side. Less than a year later, Smalls joined Frederick Douglass at the White House and successfully convinced Lincoln to allow Black men to join the Union Army.

- On the same day the Emancipation proclamation was signed the first official black regiment of the Union Army (mostly former enslaved men) was formed in Beaufort, South Carolina.

- In 1863, Harriet Tubman came to Hilton Head, formed a spy ring to gather and distribute information to slaves and led a secret military mission that freed over 700 slaves in South Carolina’s low country. She was honored for her effort, but she wasn’t paid.

- That same year, Lincoln issued a land redistribution policy that would allow 40,000 acres of abandoned Confederate plantations to be divided among 16,000 families of “African descendants.” 

- When Lincoln died in April 1965, the new president Andrew Johnson worked to restore all of these lands back to their white owners.

- In the post-war reconstruction offered a brief period of wins for the formerly enslaved citizens of South Carolina -check out what was accomplished at the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention for a taste.

- In fact, the brave boat-stealer Robert Smalls served five terms in the US House of representatives representing a South Carolina district described as ‘black paradise’ - he also purchased and lived in his former enslavers’ plantation for most of his life.

What are you learning this Juneteenth?