This move was thought to be an attempt to help the owners from the Charleston area. Foreign slave traders were not allowed to bring their enslaved persons to Charleston. Wilson, who turned the site into a museum of African American history, arts and crafts. or already owned could be sold by their masters. In 1938, the property was purchased by Miriam B. When sales were held in the shed, enslaved people stood on auction tables, three feet high and ten feet long, placed lengthwise so enslavers could pass by them during the auction. The building was used for this purpose only a short time before the defeat of the South in the Civil War led to the end of slavery.Īround 1878, the Slave Mart was renovated into a two-story tenement dwelling. Oakes, purchased the property in 1859 and applied for a permit to insert brick trusses for the roof of the shed into the adjacent Fire Hall. Before the construction of the shed, sales were held in the tenement building or in the yard.Īnother auction master, Z.B. Ryan's Mart, now the Old Slave Mart, occupied the land between Chalmers and Queen Street, and contained three additional buildings-a four-story brick tenement building with offices and "barracoon" (slave jail in Portuguese) where enslaved people were held before sales, a kitchen and a morgue. I appreciated the informative exhibits, photos, and artifacts on display. The Old Slave Mart Museum does a good job of educating visitors about how Charleston did that. It is a beautiful and magical place that seems to have been created by selling its soul. One of these belonged to Thomas Ryan, an alderman and former sheriff. Charleston reminds me of the book 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde. An 1856 city ordinance prohibited this practice of public sales, resulting in a number of sales rooms, yards, or marts along Chalmers, State and Queen Streets. Customarily in Charleston, enslaved men, women, and children were sold on the north side of the Exchange Building (then the Custom House). The interior was one large room with a 20-foot ceiling, while the front facade was more impressive with its high arch, octagonal pillars and a large iron gate.ĭuring the antebellum period, Charleston served as a center of commercial activity for the South's plantation economy, which depended heavily upon the forced labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants. charleston slavemart travelvlogCharleston old Slave Mart is one of the last standing buildings where the scars of our nation are still evident. When it was first constructed in 1859, the open ended building was referred to as a shed, and used the walls of the German Fire Hall to its west to support the roof timbers. Once part of a complex of buildings, the Slave Mart building is the only structure to remain. The Old Slave Mart, located on one of Charleston's few remaining cobblestone streets, is the only known extant building used as a slave auction gallery in South Carolina. Stand at the gate of the only surviving slave auction house in South Carolina and delve into the history of William Washington, a lesser-known Revolutionary War.
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