Charleston Time Machine

In 1750, the South Carolina legislature emancipated an enslaved man known as Doctor Caesar for sharing his secret antidote for poisons and snakebites, prepared from a combination of familiar plants. This simple decoction earned Doctor Caesar immortal fame, but it also provided a modicum of comfort during his final years and benefitted his family members who remained enslaved.

In 1872, James Henry Conyers became the first man of color to enter the U.S. Naval Academy. Although he spent the majority of his life in Charleston, few here remember his legacy. In this episode we’ll trace the arc of his biography and try to place his family and his education within the broader context of our community’s past.

South Carolina has one of the most recognizable flags in the nation, but the details of its the creation and the meaning are elusive. While others debate the shape of its signature palmetto tree, we’ll explore the background of flags and symbols in early Charleston that led to the creation of a proud blue banner of hope and resilience.

Auctions of enslaved people were a familiar sight on the streets of early Charleston until local authorities sought to constrain such spectacles into enclosed “marts” during the second quarter of the 19th century. This commercial change endured into the era of Civil War, but historic documents illustrating this form of human trafficking are not always what they purport to be.

Local legend says that George Anson acquired Ansonborough in a card game with Thomas Gadsden. While the documents related to that 1727 conveyance contain no hint of a gambling debt, the circumstances surrounding two transactions with Charles Codner of Daniel Island in 1735 suggest that the legend of Captain Anson’s gambling success might have been applied to the wrong property.

The beginning of a new calendar year in January is one of a variety of “new year” anniversaries that our forebears observed to mark the advent of a new life, monarch, or entity. The various methods of annual calculations in early South Carolina might seem arcane today, but a familiarity with their underlying concepts can help us better understand the past.

The arrival of captured enemy vessels and booty was a familiar sight in Charleston during the War of Jenkins’ Ear, but the value of a French prize brought here in December 1744 surpassed all imagination. While unpacking her mysterious cargo in the days before Christmas, the crew discovered the most amazing cache of riches ever witnessed in the American colonies.

When Charleston sacrificed a forest of street trees in 1837 for the sake of civic improvement, the loss triggered a long debate about the value of various tree species and the role of local government in promoting public health. Before the Civil War, the city selected a specific native, deciduous tree and commenced to renew the lost green canopy.

The street trees of urban Charleston’s contribute greatly to the city’s beauty and historic atmosphere, but they haven’t always been there. Our colonial streets were largely naked, and less familiar species preceded the present palmettos, live oaks, magnolias and crepe myrtles. The story of when, where, and why these street trees arose is rooted deep in the city’s past.

The earliest surviving legislative discussion of fortifications in urban Charleston took place in 1695–96, motivated by an ongoing war with France and a persistent fear of marauding pirates. The provincial government’s plan to build an expensive brick fortress, flanked by men “arrayd for battle,” forms a significant chapter in the physical evolution of South Carolina’s colonial capital.

Charleston’s historic East Bay Street began in the 1680s as a public wharf or quay adjacent to the tidal mudflats of the Cooper River. To improve the logistics of maritime commerce and to protect the adjacent buildings, South Carolina’s provincial government initiated a public-private partnership that triggered the evolution of the broad waterfront landscape we see today.

What happens when politicians refuse to concede defeat and won’t leave office? During a period of smoldering racial and political tensions in post-Civil War Charleston, the city’s incumbent mayor and aldermen created a six-month legal soap opera by repeatedly refusing to heed the results of a municipal election and ignoring court orders to vacate their offices. https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time...

In early twentieth-century South Carolina, conservative White men manipulated the state’s legal framework to silence dissenting voices. The national campaign to dismantle barriers to Black suffrage gained steam in the 1930s and gradually undermined local traditions of White supremacy. Before the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, a series of legislative changes unlocked the door to Black voting....

In post-Civil War South Carolina, White conservatives regarded suffrage as a privilege that the state’s Black majority did not deserve. The destructive war was followed by a fierce partisan battle over the fundamental right to vote. At the end of this violent and bigoted struggle, the Palmetto State adopted legal barriers that silenced the political voice of its Black citizens. Learn more: https:/...

To secure the natural landscape for colonial settlement, South Carolina’s early government offered bounty money to white, black, and Native American hunters for destroying “beasts of prey” that menaced settlers, crops, and livestock. Commencing in the coastal Lowcountry in 1693 and spreading westward to the Piedmont, bounty hunters pursued panthers, wolves, bears, and bobcats to extirpation by 179...

The records of early South Carolina contain thousands of personal names applied to many generations of people held in legal bondage. By sampling this body of names, we detect trends and evidence of resistance that help us understand their experiences and acknowledge the personal identities of the men and women who once formed the state’s enslaved majority. More: https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-tim...

The house of Nicholas Trott, one of the most important figures in colonial South Carolina, disappeared more than two centuries ago, but its former site is now part of a popular venue. The discovery of a trash pit in what was once Trott’s back yard unearthed curious artifacts that provide a new window into the narrative of early Charleston.

Did South Carolina's cantankerous Chief Justice Nicholas Trott (1663–1740) really live in a small house on the south side of Cumberland Street, or is there some flaw in this popular tale? The definitive answer lies buried in the archival record, where we find the details of a romantic story spanning 300 years.

The roots of voter discrimination in South Carolina are embedded in colonial-era traditions of exclusion that continued through the Civil War. The long campaign to establish the right for black men to vote in the Palmetto State finally succeeded in 1867, but that seminal event sparked a racially-charged backlash that reverberated through the generations to the present.

The City of Charleston addressed rising volumes of garbage in the early 20th century with traditional methods of open dumping and the new science of incineration. The advent of new landfill practices in the 1950s ended municipal trash burning, but creative recycling preserved one historic structure and smokestacks that anchor an important part of the city’s trashy history.

Professional dancer Bee Jackson’s brief sojourn to Charleston in April 1926 was immortalized on film, but the motivation behind her visit is less visible. She didn’t come here to work, nor was she paid for dancing at private parties and outdoor photo shoots. So why did Bee take a detour from her lucrative international career to do the “Charleston” in Charleston?

Two young dancers from Charleston went to Chicago in 1926 to compete in the first national “Charleston” contest. Their steps were judged the most graceful and refined, but they were overshadowed by more acrobatic interpretations of the popular dance. Nevertheless, the mayor and the local business community deemed the venture a marketing triumph for the city.

The “Charleston” was a national sensation in 1925, while critics in this city rebuked its charms. The prospect of a national dance contest, generating a bounty of advertising, finally convinced local leaders to embrace it. A series of contests in early 1926 determined the city’s best white dancers, who raced to Chicago with the mayor to receive a royal welcome.

Bee Jackson was a professional dancer in the 1920s who promoted herself as the “originator” of the “Charleston.” To bolster her claims, she sought validation from the source of the dance. But Charleston were “Charleston” shy in 1925, and Bee’s request for the keys to the city sparked a debate about the economic value of the popular dance craze.

The world-famous “Charleston” tune and dance arose from the melting pot of New York City in the 1920s and became an enduring icon of the exuberant Jazz Age. We might not have invented the “Charleston” in Charleston, but evidence suggests that Lowcountry residents provided the inspiration and key elements that define its iconic rhythm and footwork.