Recently, a volunteer group of islanders has been gathering to brainstorm how our community will celebrate America’s 250th birthday. One major element that was felt missing from our current “Welcome to Sullivan’s Island” monument sign is the acknowledgment of our significant involvement in the American Revolution. The tagline “Gateway to Liberty Since 1776” was devised as additional signage to address two points.
The Battle of Sullivan’s Island in June 1776 was a critical Patriot victory early in the conflict, one that shaped the outcome of our quest for what we now call American liberty. Without that pivotal victory, it's possible we would not have achieved the freedoms we hold dear today. This battle served as a “gateway” to American liberty, which is why we chose to include “since 1776.”
The other fact is that Sullivan’s Island has been designated as Stop No. 1 on the South Carolina Liberty Trail, positioning us as the “gateway” to a journey into our nation’s fight for freedom. (See http://bit.ly/4kPgRBY.) Our goal with this signage was to spark curiosity, inviting visitors to learn more about both the trail and the Revolution.
Criticism has now arisen that this new signage is “offensive” to certain segments of our population who found Sullivan’s Island to be a gateway to slavery rather than liberty. It’s been called “insensitive,” “embarrassing” and “tone-deaf.” Predictably, this proposed signage has also resurrected the often-repeated notion that Sullivan’s Island should somehow be considered the “Ellis Island of African slavery.” These comments, as well-intentioned as they may be, deserve further examination and rebuttal.
There are two broad topics to be addressed. First is the nature of the American “liberty” referred to in the new signage. July 4 remains a day of celebration, commemorating a document that boldly states “all men are created equal” and that everyone is entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
But we know that the founders had no intention of this applying to the Black, brown or red populations. To have suggested that to the signers would have sounded outrageous, even threatening. So every Fourth of July parade, every marching band and every firework bursting in air is a celebration of entirely cynical statements, the struggles over which continue to this day.
Despite this, our celebrations also remind us that these beginnings, as imperfect as they were, laid the groundwork for significant milestones like the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Act, the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
The organizations aligned with commemorating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution in South Carolina — such as the SC250 Commission, the SC250 Charleston Committee and the Liberty Trail — are wholeheartedly focused on telling the complete story of America’s journey toward personal liberty for all Americans. Including Sullivan’s Island as part of that story is appropriate. In essence, the new signage has already served a purpose in stimulating this public commentary and debate. That is healthy.
The other issue is the idea that Sullivan’s Island was the Ellis Island of African slavery — many times coupled with wildly inaccurate statements that every enslaved African reaching the port of Charleston spent time doing quarantine on Sullivan’s Island. That is absolutely false.
I’m not a professional historian, but much of what I believe and will say comes from our most eminent authority on the subject, Dr. Nic Butler, historian for the Charleston County Public Library. Dr. Butler has done exhaustive research into Charleston’s role in the Atlantic slave trade, including close scrutiny of the 1,000 human “cargoes” that arrived in Charleston and are documented on the website slavevoyages.org. Dr. Butler also hosts the biweekly podcast Charleston Time Machine. A quick way to become informed on this topic is to read or listen to episode No. 153, “Quarantine in Charleston Harbor, 1698–1949.” I reached out to Dr. Butler to see if any of his conclusions had changed since that episode. They have not. So I feel comfortable in directly quoting information from that podcast, some of which forms a part of the following statements.
Fact: There were at least 10 different lazaretto facilities in Charleston Harbor over the centuries, including a succession of four short-lived pest houses on Sullivan’s Island (1707–14, 1745–52, 1755–75, 1784–96). Others existed before the 1807 abolition of the legal slave trade, including ones on James Island (1797–ca. 1822) and on Morris Island (1776–80).
Fact: Based on the above, between 1707 and 1807, pest houses existed on Sullivan’s Island only 46% of that 100-year span. If an enslaved person had been brought to this area during the other 54 years, there would have been no pest house here in which they could have been incarcerated. Not exactly the story of Ellis Island, which operated continuously for 62 years.
Fact: Of the 12 million Africans who were captured against their will and sent across the infamous Middle Passage, only 10 million made it to the New World — a statistic that is horrible by itself. Of those 10 million, only 4%, or about 470,000, were brought to North America. The remainder were transported to the Caribbean and South America. (Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888.) Approximately 150,000 to 200,000 of the North American slave trade came through the port of Charleston. Of those, research indicates that as few as 5,000 to as many as 20,000 may have ever set foot on Sullivan’s Island. In a recent communication, Dr. Butler confirmed that he remains confident that a relatively small number of incoming Africans and white Europeans visited one of the successive pest houses on Sullivan’s Island.
At this point, someone will think I am saying something positive about slavery or the slave trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even one enslaved person incarcerated on this island is one too many. I abhor the concept of slavery. I detest the stain on American history called slavery. England, our mother country, abolished slavery in 1834 with an act of Parliament. It took us until 1865, with four years of war and more than 650,000 casualties, to do the same.
So where did this term “Ellis Island of African slavery” come from? The earliest use I have found was in the introduction to the book Black Majority, written by former Duke University Professor Peter H. Wood. Originally composed as his graduate thesis at Harvard University, the book was published in 1974. Unfortunately, if Professor Wood coined this phrase, he did so only accompanied by general statements like, “Sullivan’s Island … where incoming captives were briefly quarantined, might well be viewed as the Ellis Island of Black Americans,” and, “Estimates suggest that well over 40% of the enslaved Africans reaching the British mainland colonies between 1700 and 1775 arrived in South Carolina.” He gives no further explanation for the origin of the term.
But we all love catchy labels. So, this one was born and took on a life of its own. It has been repeated thoughtlessly over and over, including by critics of the current additional signage. Roy Finkelbine used it in a 2020 article, “The Erasure of the History of Slavery at Sullivan’s Island.” An unnamed author repeated it in a 2009 article in National Parks Traveler, proclaiming, “Sullivan’s Island was the African American Ellis Island.” Wikipedia states that “Sullivan’s Island was the point of entry for approximately 40 to 50 percent of the 400,000 enslaved Africans brought to Colonial America, meaning that 99% of all African Americans have ancestors that came through the island. It has been likened to Ellis Island.” The online version of a recent Channel 2 News article that addressed the current signage controversy states that, “According to the National Park Service, more than 400,000 enslaved Africans arrived in America through Sullivan’s Island.” The National Park Service has never made such a statement.
These and other statements — grossly inaccurate or at best misleading — have assured the seeming permanence of this mistaken concept and have tied a millstone around this island’s neck for being the horrible place where every enslaved African brought to the colonies was imprisoned, subjected to inhumane treatment, and then sold into the depths of bondage. It appears clear that numbers related to the port of Charleston as a whole have now been attributed to Sullivan’s Island alone. It’s time to stop this perpetuation of false history and ditch the catchy phrase.
I see nothing wrong with the verbiage being added to our welcome sign. It serves the two purposes I mentioned at the beginning. It prompts the needed, ongoing discussion of the difference between our national liberty gained through independence and the individual liberty that many still do not enjoy. If the signage stimulates one person to read, research, study and learn more about the true nature of the American experience, it will have served an even greater purpose.