The South Carolina African-American History Memorial

The South Carolina African-American History Monument
on the State Capitol grounds.

Built in 2001 by sculptor Ed Dwight of Denver, Colorado, the South Carolina African-American History Monument is probably one of the first of its kind on any capitol grounds in the United States. 

The monument is located on the eastern side of the South Carolina Statehouse grounds and was dedicated on March 29, 2001. 

The round monument is modeled after an African village and designed in several parts, including: a center Egyptian obelisk that represents spirituality, a granite marker that depicts the original homelands of enslaved Africans, a bronze slave ship icon, and a two-part wall that depicts nearly 400 years of black history and their contributions to our shared Southern heritage of South Carolina from slavery in the mid-1600s to the fight for freedom, the struggle for civil rights and emergence into mainstream America into the 20th and the 21st century. 

The following are photos taken by this blogger of this outstanding monument, along with details about what is represented by each image.

This bronze marker represents the hold of a
European slave ship containing 336 enslaved
Africans chained together for the duration of
the then three month long trans-Atlantic voyage.
Of that number, only about half would usually
survive the journey living in those terrible and
inhuman conditions.

This granite monument traces African-American history from the
Middle Passage. At the base are four rubbing stones from Senegal,
Sierra Leone, Ghana, and the Congo, where most of the slaves
were captured by other black tribes and sold to white European
slave traders from Northern and Western Europe who brought them
to the Americas between 1500 till as late as 1880 (illegally) in Brazil,
the last country in the Western Hemisphere to continue African slavery.

Here is shown the places most South Carolinians of African
descent came from as their ancestors were captured and then
taken via the Atlantic Slave Trade to Charleston, SC.

The first two panels on the Left Wall depict a typical auction
block in Charleston where enslaved Africans, priced according
to their skills and abilities, were sold to the highest bidders.
This includes a reproduction of an 1852 newspaper ad that is
symbolic of 17th - 19th century advertisements for slave auctions.
The other panel illustrates the voyage from Africa to America
with enslaved Africans with their European captors on the deck
of a slave ship.

The next two panels represent the slave experiences in South Carolina.
The four slaves depicted are: a female rice planter, a male pickerholding a basket of cotton,
an indigo worker, and a skilled carpenter.
The panel next to it depicts resistance as these slaves plan to escape,
possibly via the Underground Railroad to black communities like
Birchtown, Nova Scotia, Canada founded by former Black British Loyalists
after the American Revolutionary War.

The next two panels represent at least one telling of the
War Between The States and Emancipation. One panel is
a depiction of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers (later
re-designated the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment),
a regiment of Union soldiers made up of former slaves from the South
Carolina lowlands and Georgia coast. The last panel depicts
slaves rejoicing over Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
and subsequent liberation following the end of the War in 1865.
This scene probably depicts the reaction to the reading of the proclamation
at the Smith Plantation near Beaufort, SC in January 1863.

On a special note, this bronze marker is the only monument
dedicated to Union soldiers on the South Carolina Capitol grounds,
aside from bronze stars on the western side of the Statehouse point out
where Union cannonballs hit the building and a broken statue of George
Washington damaged by white Union soldiers during General W.T.
Sherman's invasion in February 1865.
A 36-Star Union banner is placed at the site during yearly Confederate Memorial Day
services in May by members of the South Carolina Division
Sons of Confederate Veterans out of respect to the memory of these
Southern-born Unionists.

The next two panels on the Right Wall of the memorial depict
the US government's efforts to allegedly equalize the statue of freed
slaves with the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the
US Constitution.
The African-American legislator depicted -- a possible representation
of Robert Smalls, a well known South Carolina Unionist and
Reconstruction Era politician.
The panel next to that one depicts Jim Crow, Black Codes, and
other restrictive laws passed in South Carolina to prevent
freed Black South Carolinians from being more than sharecroppers
and restricting their ability to vote.

The next two panels show the events immediately following the
end of Reconstruction in South Carolina and the passing of
restrictive Jim Crow segregation laws. The first panel depicts
the Great Exodus of Black Southerners to the North
(which also ironically had its own established white supremacist
codes and terror groups, though not nearly as visible as Jim Crow).
This was one of the largest mass migrations in American history.
The next panel depicts the 1954 US Supreme Court case Brown v. the
Board of Education and the historic decision integrating public
schools.
This case originated in Clarendon, SC with the Briggs v. Elliott lawsuit.

The final two panels depict the fight for equal rights during the
Civil Rights Era of the late 1950s and 1960s. This shows those
who protested and spoke up for equal treatment under the law
in South Carolina. This blogger plans to post some of those
inspiring individual stories at a later date here on this blog.
The final and largest panel shows the progress made and the
triumph over adversity, with Black South Carolinians excelling
in such prominent fields as business, politics, education,
professional sports, art, music and science.
South Carolina is the home to many amazing personalities.

Anyone taking a trip to Columbia should stop at the Statehouse and check this monument out. It is well worth the time to look at and ponder the history behind it. Also be sure to check out the other monuments on the grounds depicting the outstanding history of the great State of South Carolina.