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Being taught about slavery in Charleston schools has little to do with how tour guides once told Charleston's history in regard to slavery, plantations, wealthy planters, the Civil War, etc., conveniently leaving out the pain suffered by enslaved people and their descendants through the Civil Rights Era.
Are you basing this assertion on articles that you have read or this your own experience? It is hard to believe anybody on a tour at an old plantation thinks slavery was great for the slave or the tours used to present slavery in a positive light.
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Originally Posted by Charlestondata
She's talking about people who are natives of a place, or who have lived there awhile, being attached to their locale just as it is, and claiming that new people who relocate there and visitors are messing up the domain that they perceive to be theirs and their homies' and no one else's.
I, on the other hand, blame poor planning by those in power, pretty much no matter which popular locale we're speaking of. I'm hanging my hat on the pending new way of developing by a newly adopted mindset that Charleston leaders are working to get developers to buy into.
Sorry, I did not make clear my question.
Kathleen Parker said there used to be "shimmering spirits that brushed your shoulder as you entered certain houses" in Charleston. I assume she is talking about ghosts. If the new development in Charleston she does not like is running off the ghosts, that seems like a good thing. It is kind of incredible a newspaper columnist implied there were ghosts in Charleston.
She also mentions "secret passageways that led to deeper mysteries". Where were the secret passageways? If she knew about them, were they really a secret?
She states "lusty Lowcountry nights" are also gone. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume lust is as strong as ever in the lowcountry.
I’ve never been on a plantation tour, but I wasn’t born yesterday, and I’m a native South Carolinian, so I can assure you that the narrative has changed from too much of a nostalgic focus on wealthy planters’ and their families’ dreamy lives to more of a focus on the hardships and heroics of the enslaved on a local history level.
Speaking of nostalgic focuses, I feel Kathleen Parker gets carried away in her Charleston piece. I did go on a ghost tour, and I feel quite certain Charleston’s ghosts are as present and accounted for as they ever were. Come let them brush against you.
As a native of SC, I feel like the slavery, Civil War, and segregation stuff has kind of been beat to death. Slavery ended in 1865. I don't really want to do a slavery deep dive on my vacation. I feel like a majority of active young people would prefer my Greenville and Upstate tourism package with whitewater rafting / kayaking, hiking, boating on Jocasse to a Charleston tourism package that featured the history stuff.
Are there plantation tours that let people walk around without listening to a tour guide? I wouldn't mind walking around the grounds especially if there are nice gardens. I think there is a potential for a tour guide to be kind of preachy. I prefer a dispassionate or even humorous approach to history but you are making it sound kind of depressing.
As a native of SC, I feel like the slavery, Civil War, and segregation stuff has kind of been beat to death. Slavery ended in 1865. I don't really want to do a slavery deep dive on my vacation. I feel like a majority of active young people would prefer my Greenville and Upstate tourism package with whitewater rafting / kayaking, hiking, boating on Jocasse to a Charleston tourism package that featured the history stuff.
Are there plantation tours that let people walk around without listening to a tour guide? I wouldn't mind walking around the grounds especially if there are nice gardens. I think there is a potential for a tour guide to be kind of preachy. I prefer a dispassionate or even humorous approach to history but you are making it sound kind of depressing.
You speak as though you believe antebellum tourism is the only type of tourism Charleston offers. All I’m saying is that within that sphere of tourism here, the industry has come clean, and it no longer gives the “whitewashed” version of the story.
In high school I don’t recall my American history teacher describing in depth the typical day in the lives of enslaved people, let alone bringing us down to Charleston and walking the streets and touring plantations where it happened.
The International African American Museum will open soon, and more Black people are expected to visit the area once it does. The mint juleps and aristocrats version of the area’s antebellum history won’t cut it anymore.
I barely remember hearing a tour guide speak compared to the time we spent walking around Magnolia Plantation on our own when we went years ago. It is beautiful in spring, and it’s only one of several that are highly worthwhile for their beauty alone.
But no, if young white people can’t stand to hear the story of antebellum Charleston in a balanced way for fear of getting depressed, they can do other stuff here.
Based on your comments, I suspect there is probably a "white guilt" and "virtue signaling" element to the tours now. People are already getting a lot of that in their daily lives. Vacations are supposed to be about getting away from the daily grind.
We need to have a balance between Kathleen Parker's approach and the "woke" version of history telling. I don't want to rehash this topic with you but I think Charleston's decision to put up that Hollings statue in downtown is a legit example of whitewashing. They presented him as something he was not. That decision is probably going to get reexamined in 20 years if not sooner.
Here's a tourism prediction for Greenville. Greenville's next Great Work after the observation tower in Unity Park is going to be a gigantic Albert Einstein statue in Falls Park or above it in the County Square redevelopment, the former location of Furman University. This statue will rival the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial. There will be an Einstein and science related museum next to it. It will become the premiere Einstein museum in the world.
Here's a picture of Einstein on Furman's original campus above present day Falls Park. https://scdl.contentdm.oclc.org/digi...oll12/id/2014/
It would be so cool if Einstein was still with us and popped up on this forum with an opinion about something in Greenville like the intersection of Haywood and Laurens. Imagine if he was going around the world talking up Greenville.
Last edited by Vaccinated Masker; 08-14-2022 at 08:45 PM..
Antebellum history explained right need make no one living feel guilty. I’d sooner go to Charleston’s Apple Museum, the only one in the Southeast, than to go see Albert Einstein’s statue and house.
I doubt most Charleston residents know about that. It doesn't show up on Google maps. Apple is overrated in my view. The Apple store on King St is rated t 3.8 out of 5 on Google which seems pretty low given the hype. Apple pulls a 3.8 in Greenville as well.
Why did you start off at Clemson? It seems like you would have gone to College of Charleston or U of SC. I grew up in the eastern part of the state and always wanted to live near the Blue Ridge. Charleston and the Pee Dee are too flat. Clemson's location on the lake was also appealing to me. I didn't realize until I got older there aren't many colleges on a lake. In my view, Clemson is the perfect true college town.
They said back in the late 90s Clemson is the largest city in the state during Saturday home games. Given the popularity of college football and Clemson's success, that's a pretty solid tourist attraction. Clemson has the 14th largest football stadium in the country.
How many places in this country can you go to a Power 5 conference football game then go boating, hiking in the mountains, see a waterfall, kayaking, play golf, mountain biking in the same general area?
And for the history fans out there, how many colleges are located on a former plantation with the mansion still present. I think Clemson is the only one in this country.
Last edited by Vaccinated Masker; 08-15-2022 at 05:03 PM..
I doubt most Charleston residents know about that. It doesn't show up on Google maps. Apple is overrated in my view. The Apple store on King St is rated t 3.8 out of 5 on Google which seems pretty low given the hype. Apple pulls a 3.8 in Greenville as well.
Why did you start off at Clemson? It seems like you would have gone to College of Charleston or U of SC. I grew up in the eastern part of the state and always wanted to live near the Blue Ridge. Charleston and the Pee Dee are too flat. Clemson's location on the lake was also appealing to me. I didn't realize until I got older there aren't many colleges on a lake. In my view, Clemson is the perfect true college town.
They said back in the late 90s Clemson is the largest city in the state during Saturday home games. Given the popularity of college football and Clemson's success, that's a pretty solid tourist attraction. Clemson has the 14th largest football stadium in the country.
How many places in this country can you go to a Power 5 conference football game then go boating, hiking in the mountains, see a waterfall, kayaking, play golf, mountain biking in the same general area?
And for the history fans out there, how many colleges are located on a former plantation with the mansion still present. I think Clemson is the only one in this country.
I went to Clemson because I thought I wanted to study ornamental horticulture. Also, one of my older brothers was there. My uncle and lots of cousins close and distant went there. My maternal SC coastal plain agrarian roots run deep, back to land grants and to Charleston before that. My third cousin is the South Carolina commissioner of agriculture. His grandfather was my grandmother’s first cousin. Clemson’s in our blood, but it wasn’t my scene.
The Apple museum has been in the news here, including tech news. Probably a bunch of Samsung fans participated in the rating sites.
The coast isn’t too flat. If you can say it is too flat as though that’s a fact, I can say flat land is better than hilly land as though it were a fact. Silly.
How is a town of Clemson’s size the largest city in the state with 90,000 added on a Saturday, but a city of Columbia’s size isn’t the largest in the state on a Saturday with 80,000 added? Silly.
I won’t bother asking how many places in the country yada yada yada. But a mansion in downtown Charleston that was built by Edward Rutledge, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, just sold for $7 million, and country singer and Hootie and the Blowfish star Darius Rucker is renovating another mansion that he bought for $6 million.
I went to Clemson because I thought I wanted to study ornamental horticulture. Also, one of my older brothers was there. My uncle and lots of cousins close and distant went there. My maternal SC coastal plain agrarian roots run deep, back to land grants and to Charleston before that. My third cousin is the South Carolina commissioner of agriculture. His grandfather was my grandmother’s first cousin. Clemson’s in our blood, but it wasn’t my scene.
The Apple museum has been in the news here, including tech news. Probably a bunch of Samsung fans participated in the rating sites.
The coast isn’t too flat. If you can say it is too flat as though that’s a fact, I can say flat land is better than hilly land as though it were a fact. Silly.
How is a town of Clemson’s size the largest city in the state with 90,000 added on a Saturday, but a city of Columbia’s size isn’t the largest in the state on a Saturday with 80,000 added? Silly.
I won’t bother asking how many places in the country yada yada yada. But a mansion in downtown Charleston that was built by Edward Rutledge, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, just sold for $7 million, and country singer and Hootie and the Blowfish star Darius Rucker is renovating another mansion that he bought for $6 million.
Okay, your turn. But I might not reply.
Don't blame those ratings on us Samsung folks. We don't step foot into Apple stuff. Lol
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