Mapping Rice, Mapping Race: The East Branch of Cooper River and the "Big Map," 1985-87

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

From 1985 to 1987, Leland Ferguson and I prepared a detailed interpretive map of 18th to 19th century rice plantations along the East Branch of Cooper River, northeast of Charleston, S.C. We drew the layout of these plantations onto an overlay of U.S.G.S topo maps. Leland's first purpose was to locate the sites of villages created and inhabited by enslaved people of African descent. We were largely successful in this project, which also revealed the past landscape that showed the achievement of these Black pioneers, who created, then operated, the technological landscape of low-country rice, under conditions of severe oppression. Beyond "Black labor, white rice," we found the true intellectual and material contribution of these early African Americans to American history. We also saw, in revealing this landscape almost two centuries after its creation, the racism that had hidden this contribution from most Americans. This map was "big," indeed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow