The College of Charleston’s Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library is presenting a lecture and exhibit on the Carolina’s principal cash crop – rice. “A Monumental Legacy – Documenting Charleston’s Earliest Rice Fields” will be on display through the month of September in the second floor gallery of the Addlestone Library. A lecture will be held on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 6:00 p.m. featuring historian Charles Philips of Brockington and Associates and environmental historian Hayden Smith. The lecture will be in Addlestone Library room 227 and is free and open to the public.
The early history of Carolina’s principal cash crop is still visible in the swamps of the Charleston Lowcountry. Using historic documents as well as recent photographs and mapping, Philips and Smith will discuss how 18th century enslaved Africans and European planters built this rice empire.
The exhibit features a series of photographs taken in March 2010 as part of efforts to document the old inland rice fields surrounding Palmetto Commerce Parkway. Researchers found remnants of a system of inland rice fields that once were part of two early 18th century plantations: Windsor Hill Plantation and Woodland Plantation. Charleston County worked with the South Carolina Department of Archives and History to develop a plan to document and protect these important historical features.
Rice and the enslaved people who constructed and tended the fields created the wealth that built Charleston from 1700 until the end of the Civil War in 1865. The most remarkable monuments to the incredible labor required to build this rice empire are the remnants of canals, ditches, and embankments still present in the secluded swamps and marshes of the Lowcountry. They are quiet memorials to generations of enslaved people who labored unceasingly and unpaid for nearly 200 years.
Additional information about the research project, the role of rice in the development of the Lowcountry, and the enormous contributions made by African Americans to its success will soon be available at www.charlestoncounty.org.
This event is co-sponsored the College of Charleston’s CLAW (Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World) program and funded by Charleston County Government.
The photographic exhibition is funded by Charleston County Government. Photography by Rick McKee of Lowery McKee Photography. Exhibition curated by Brockington and Associates, Inc. and the History Workshop.
