Charleston’s International African American Museum Offers New Look at History

The International African American Museum (IAAM) in Charlestonsits atop rounded pillars that keep the structure itself from touching theground at Gadsden’sWharf.

There’sa reason for that – IAAM’s architect, the late Henry N. Cobb, considered the site“hallowed ground” because it was the entry point for theuntold thousands of Africans who were brought to South Carolina as slaves, manyof whom died there soon after arrival.

The histories of Charleston and the North American slave tradeare inextricably woven together, and those threads are visible from the momenta visitor steps foot onto the IAAM campus.

A reflective black marble wall features a poem by Maya Angelouthat concludes, “I rise, I rise, I rise,” and is flanked by abstractkneeling figures sculpted from concrete.

Nearby, a brick outline traces the dimensions of the storagehouse where enslaved individuals were kept before being sold at auction. Theconditions there were primitive, and many men, women, and children did notsurvive that house.

A fountain facing the wharf contains outlines of human figurescaught between the ports of departure from Africa and the North and SouthAmerican ports of arrival, the water rising and falling with the tides.

Charleston is a crucial part of the American experience withslavery because approximately half of the African people brought here as slavescame through the Lowcountry. The museum, which opened to the public in lateJune, is the second-largest African American museum in the country, behind theSmithsonian, said Tonya M. Matthews, Ph.D., the museum’s president and CEO.

While the IAAM offers the chance for visitors to see artifactsfrom across the world, the museum experience seeks to do more than showcasecenturies-old items. The experience offers the African diaspora as a foundationfor exploring the wider world, from pre-history to the present.

The fountain helps to set the scene, but the museum’s interior brings to life amultitude of stories that flow out from a common source.

The tour begins with an 18-minute film about the Transatlanticexperience, which blends still photographs and video images to “giveyou a sense of all of the themes in the museum,” Matthews. “Itwill run all the way from, say, Timbuktu, ancient civilizations (and) it willcome up to the period of slavery, and it keeps on going.”

The international component is evident from this first moment ofentry, carrying visitors through the displays, from an exhibit about the firstrecorded instance of human rice cultivation thousands of years ago, to a14th-century carved headpiece from the Yoruba region of what is now Nigeria, tomodern-day sweetgrass baskets woven in South Carolina.

“You run through all of the emotions” in thatintroductory film, “and that’s what this space is for, to give you a hint ofeverything that you’regoing to see,” Matthews said.

There is a gallery paying tribute to the Gullah and Geecheeculture centered in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, and another one called “AfricanRoots and Routes,” which traces the many paths that individuals of Africandescent have taken throughout the world, and the lasting impressions that theircultures made on the world at large.

Another area of the museum lays out the stark human cost of theslave trade, illuminating the lives lost on slave ship voyages to the Americas,the estimated number of individuals who passed through Charleston, and many ofthe African people whose names were changed after they were purchased by slaveowners.

One wall lists names and ages of people such as Oobah, age 16;Manmoque, age 21; and Kiabree, age 18, who arrived on slave ships. Another wallspotlights individual names taken from slave records of plantations, peoplewith names such as Jack, Bella, Hagar, and Old Venus.

According to the museum, more than 150,000 people from Africaarrived in the Charleston area between 1710 and 1808, on voyages that averaged63 days.

In addition to the artifacts, films, and historical elements, themuseum is home to a genealogy research center, the Center for Family History.Researchers are on staff to help visitors trace their ancestry, throughconnections to some of the world’s largest genealogy databases, Matthews said.

The museum’s blend of themes and artifacts showcases the vast rangeof emotions key to the history of African Americans across the centuries.

“It’s interesting the way human emotions work. There arecertain things, I think, that are more visceral than others,” Matthews said,comparing small personal items that belonged to individual enslaved people withthe large numbers associated with the slave trade.

The stories that are told at IAAM are large in scale – theinternational slave trade – but there are smaller stories, too, illuminatingmoments in the lives of the individuals who spent their lives in the shacklesof slavery, and of the people who made history in the nearly 160 years sincethe Emancipation Proclamation declared the end of slavery.

“The idea is to spark curiosity, spark inspiration,”hoping that visitors leave the museum with questions that can be answered bymore research and reading, Matthews said.

Matthews said she isn’t trying to evoke one particular feeling for visitors,but rather the spectrum of emotions threaded through African American historyand the experiences of individual African Americans through the generations.

“The greatest gift of the African American journey is itsability to teach the way that we simultaneously hold the sensations of traumaand joy,” she said. “Not trauma on Tuesday and joy on Thursday; it’s all kindof woven up in there together, and we’ve been really intentional about the way that we tellthe story.”

The museum has been in the works for more than 20 years – sincethen-Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. proposed in 2000 that the city of Charlestoncreate a museum dedicated to telling the stories of African Americanexperiences.

But the road to getting the museum from idea to reality has beenhampered by a few bumps, including decisions about where to locate the museum,and more recently, a problem with the humidity-control system that led to aseveral-month delay.

The process began with a simple premise: convincing people thatthe museum was needed, said Wilbur Johnson, chair of the IAAM board ofdirectors.

Speaking at the Building OneSouthCarolina Forum in May, where themuseum received the 2023 OneSouthCarolina Partners in Progress Award from theRiley Institute, Johnson said, “The first obstacle is having peopleunderstand that it’spossible and that there’s a reason for its existence.”

Johnson credited Riley with helping to create and deliver themessage that Charleston should have a museum dedicated to the African Americanexperience through the centuries. Then, Johnson said, “thatmade fundraising possible.”

The eagerness of individuals and corporations to contributesmoothed the process in many ways, and some of the challenges the IAAM facedallowed it to fine-tune its focus, Matthews said.

“If we had opened at any other time, we would have been adifferent museum. We started out as a museum that was really going to help thecommunity learn just about slavery, and just about slavery in Charleston. Andthen you get five, 10 years, you get some more people in the room, and they’re like, ‘No, we needto tell a bigger picture. … Let’s go back to the origin.’”

Each delay allowed museum officials to reconsider the story theywanted to tell.

And Matthews’ hope is that the museum will engage not just the peoplewhose ancestors may have passed through Gadsden’s Wharf 250 years ago, but allmembers of the community.

IAAM has about 49,000 charter members, 70 percent of whom liveoutside of South Carolina.

While museum officials expected a bit of negative response fromthe community, “that’s not what we’ve seen,” Matthews said.

Instead, individuals have expressed interest in learning moreabout South Carolina’shistory, both positive and negative.

“It’s not about generating shame; it’s about claiming the courage thatwe’reshowing in telling these stories,” she said.

The story of the African American experience continues to evolve,but the IAAM’smission to never forget the history is starkly evident on that marble wall thatvisitors see before entering the building.

The wall is inscribed with an 1807 quote from Charleston travelerJohn Lambert, who said of the Africans who were brought to the Lowcountry onslave ships: “These poor beings were obliged to be kept on board theships, or in large buildings at Gadsden’s Wharf, for months together… Their clothing was veryscanty, and some unusually sharp weather during the winter carried off greatnumbers of them. Upwards of seven hundred of them died in less than threemonths.”