Struggle, Perseverance, and Protest at Jamestown: A Black Community in the Pee Dee Region of SC.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeology, Activism, and Protest", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 1870, former captive Ervin James (1815-1872) purchased one hundred and five acres from two white landowners to establish his family farm. By 1891, his sons had bought an additional 140 acres where they grew crops, raised livestock, and hunted wildlife in the swamp. At the community’s peak in the 1920s, over 250 people called Jamestown home, and the community included a cemetery, a Methodist church, and a school. In the 1940s, the community started to decline, as residents increasingly had to seek employment farther away.

            Archaeological and historical evidence, including oral histories, underscore the complexity of everyday life at Jamestown. While residents were economically marginalized, they still owned and worked their own land, something that was--and still is—denied to many African Americans. This paper focuses on the confluence of historical struggle, perseverance, and present-day protest in rural South Carolina.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Archaeology, Activism, and Protest

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow