This week, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Nedra Rhone and her 12-year-old daughter Layla are on the road, traveling to five Black history museums in five days.
When Rhone was growing up in Chicago, her parents took her on similar summer trips. And, just like them, she has a mission — to educate her daughter about significant moments in American history and culture.
First stop: Charleston
We arrived in Charleston, the so-called Holy City, in a pouring rain. Definitely, the highlight of our first day in the city was the Old Slave Mart Museum.
Established in 1938, the Old Slave Mart Museum is the oldest museum still in existence that is dedicated to African American history and culture.
Charleston was a major hub in the domestic slave trade.
The exhibits at the Old Slave Mart Museum are heavy on text — this isn’t a place to view artifacts from the past. We were lucky enough to arrive on a day when there was a speaker who offered deep insight into how we should view pieces of history.
Christine King Mitchell, a native of Augusta, has been a docent at the Old Slave Mart Museum since 2013. She said she tells the stories of people who were “bought and sold in legalized human trafficking.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
She showed us slave manifests, broker contracts, bank loans and insurance policies, legal documents that illustrate how slavery was written into the fabric of the country.
“This is all American history,” she said. “It is part of a bigger story. Just tell the truth.”
Also of interest:
After the museum, we took time to visit Charleston City Market, a marketplace for vendors selling everything from jewelry to sweetgrass baskets made by the Gullah people, descendants of enslaved people who held on to their cultural practices after coming to coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia from West Africa.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Our final stop? Seafood at the family-owned Charleston Crab House before checking in at the only Black-owned full-service hotel in the city, the Courtyard by Marriott Charleston Historic District. The hotel is owned by Robert Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, according to Travel & Leisure magazine.
If you go:
Credit: ArLuther Lee
Credit: ArLuther Lee
Follow our journey at https://www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/ and https://www.instagram.com/ajcnews/.
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