By: Nate Johnson, Park Manager at Landsford Canal State Park, former Manager of Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site
June 24, 2024
The Featured Projects series focuses on historic preservation projects focused on preserving Black history throughout SC. Each project is asked to respond to four prompts. We hope this series helps bring awareness to the stunning number and variety of preservation projects being undertaken across the state, highlights the dedication of our community leaders, and inspires future generations of projects.
Want to feature your preservation project? Send us an email here.
| Provide a brief summary of your project, making sure to include why it’s important for African American historic preservation. |
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| For the last decade, the South Carolina State Park Service has located, researched, preserved, interpreted, and brought public attention to the historic ruins of tenant houses at Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site in Union County, SC. The organization has done this work in collaboration with African American descendants, community members, and students. These tenant houses were structures in which African American farmers lived from the post-emancipation years through the Great Depression. Their stories are central to the plantation’s history. Even though the houses are in ruins today, they remain evocative and powerful sites with direct connections to the people who lived in them. Still visible are the brick foundations from the fireplaces and chimneys, the stone piers that supported the houses, and surrounding yard features, like garden beds and sunken roads. African American families who lived in these homes, including the Glenns and the Jeters, have conducted multiple oral history interviews since 2018 to document their memories of the place. In 2021, park service staff built a trail to one of the tenant houses, developed an interpretive marker, and installed a rope around the ruins to protect them. In 2023, students from South Carolina schools (including Benedict College and SC State University, both HBCUs) did a week-long archaeology project at the tenant houses, continuing and deepening archaeological studies initiated at the site in 2015. All these collaborative efforts have increased access to and awareness of the tenant houses, making sure that they are recognized as crucial elements of the plantation landscape. |
| What motivated you/your community/your team to begin this project? |
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| The motivation is justice. The people who lived inside these tenant houses experienced vast, terrible injustices in their lifetimes and on this plantation. When Rose Hill became a historic site, further injustice was done. Structures where the Black majority lived and worked – like the tenant houses – were not preserved. Slavery, sharecropping, and racial oppression were glossed over in interpreting the plantation’s history. Instead, preservation and interpretation efforts focused almost entirely on the white Gist family and the Gist Mansion, whitewashing the public’s understanding of the plantation. To put energy into preserving, documenting, and interpreting the tenant houses today, then, is corrective action. The tenant house sites deserve more attention. And it can be seen as a certain act of justice when we turn our attention to them. |
| What challenges have you faced in this project? |
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| One challenge is getting everybody to see that ruins are, indeed, important. True, the tenant houses are not fully intact, but their ruins can still reveal a lot of information about this plantation’s history and the people who lived here. The ruins can still pack a lot of emotional power. Even though these houses once were ignored and neglected (not by residents, but by the people turning this plantation into a historic site), we can visit these ruins today with reverence, wonder, and respect. Consistent and effective communication from everybody who cares for these ruins – rangers, descendants, historians, community partners, archaeologists, volunteers, and students – will spread awareness and appreciation of their historical value. |
| How have you solved problems and found solutions? What advice would you give to others doing this kind of work? |
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| It has been hard to find exact information on each tenant house, like its appearance or which family lived in it, when documenting them or when interpreting their significance for the public. I would recommend focusing on what you do know. What artifacts were recovered during archaeological investigations? What general memories did an elder have about growing up in this area? I would recommend not to give up hope on finding the exact information you are looking for. However, while you are searching, stay open and glean any other information you can along the way. Don’t ignore any evidence, story, or data that can help you document (in this case) a structure or craft a compelling interpretation of its significance. |