Destination Dixie: Tourism and Southern History

6 “Is It Okay to Talk about Slaves?” Segregating the Past in Historic Charleston

137 6 “Is It Okay to Talk about Slaves?” Segregating the Past in Historic Charleston Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts Spend an afternoon today, in the early twenty-first century, sitting under the sprawling oaks at the Battery on Charleston’s southern tip, and you will be surrounded by time travelers.1 No doubt you will see an old-fashioned carriage driven by a guide decked out in Confederate gray meandering along the sea wall. He encourages the men, women, and children on his tour to envision the romance of the Old South. Obliging, they gaze at the meticulously restored mansions that look out on Charleston Harbor and dream about the lavish parties they once hosted. They peer into the distance and find Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. They hear stories of how, once the fighting began, the city’s white elite gathered along the rooftops of the Battery to watch the magnificent fireworks show unfold. You might also see a van filled with history buffs moving slowly down the same path. This tour, however, emphasizes not the splendor of the homes but the modest quarters that lie behind, not the wealth of the owners but the craftsmanship of those who built the mansions. Rather than focusing their attention on Fort Sumter in the middle of the harbor, these tourists are directed, instead, to locate the island that lies to the left. That is Sullivan ’s Island, they learn, the largest entrepôt for enslaved Africans brought to this country. “That was our Ellis Island,” remarks the guide, before he discusses the pest house where Africans were kept in quarantine prior to being transported into Charleston to be sold.2 The historical lens shifts, in short, from the luxury of planter life and the military spectacle of the bom- 138 Segregating the Past in Historic Charleston bardment of Fort Sumter to the tragic realities of the Middle Passage and the auction block. Historian Ted Ownby’s claim that “going among southerners means going into the past” is especially true in Charleston.3 Long billed as “America’s Most Historic City,” it is one of the most popular southern destinations for those wanting to experience the past. In 2008 more than four million tourists descended upon Charleston, and they ranked history as their top reason for visiting the city.4 Yet those who visit often have varying ideas about what they should see while there. And the dozens of guides who lead tours— whether on foot or in a carriage or van—construct quite different narratives about the city’s past. While Charleston’s restaurants, accommodations, and parks have not been segregated for decades, a different sort of segregation has emerged in the city. Historical tourism in Charleston is highly bifurcated , offering racial narratives that rarely overlap. Slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and race more generally play a significant but dissimilar role in each of these narratives. The treatment of the Battery and Charleston Harbor is a perfect case in point. Most tour guides see these as the spaces where a chivalrous and refined civilization flourished and then met its unfortunate demise. Responding to this perspective, other guides frame them as sites of tragedy and exploitation. Unsurprisingly, the roots of Charleston’s segregated approach to historical tourism can be traced to the Jim Crow era.5 The end of the Civil War resulted in a period of isolation that proved a mixed blessing for the city. Located at the terminus of a rail line rather than on a main route, postbellum Charleston was passed over by the industrial transformations of the New South and was, thus, well preserved. Yet that same inaccessibility engendered a lackluster economy. In the early twentieth century, Charleston elites began to see dollars and cents in the lavish mansions of their port city, arguing that a booming tourist business was the antidote to its economic malaise. Unable to transform itself into a New South city, Charleston retreated into its Old South past. Helped immeasurably by the widespread adoption of the automobile, these boosters had succeeded by the end of the 1920s in building a tourist infrastructure—a tourism bureau, ornate hotels, and serviceable roads. Charleston was ready for the tourist throngs to arrive , eager to confirm that it was, as Mayor Thomas Stoney first proclaimed in 1924, “America’s Most Historic City.”6 A loosely affiliated network of groups helped visitors make sense of Charleston’s history in these...