Seven Eras of Slavery History & Museum Tour

Seven Eras of Slavery History & Museum Tour

The Free People of Color History Tour uncovers Charleston's east-side neighborhood, a 300-year-old African-American community. Discover how free people of color witted and gritted their way out of slavery, and learn about the trials and tribulations that still exist in this community today.

Itinerary
This is a typical itinerary for this product

Stop At: Philip Simmons Museum Home and Workshop, 30 1/2 Blake St, Charleston, SC 29403-5044

We will start our exploration of Charleston's 300 year old African community at the Philip Simmons Museum where one of the greatest African American artist of the 20th century created a lifetime of beauty. Led by the museum docents, we will witness the humble life of a great artisan.

Duration: 30 minutes

Pass By: Aiken-Rhett House, 48 Elizabeth St, Charleston, SC 29403-6250

Built in 1820 by merchant John Robinson, the Aiken-Rhett House is nationally significant as one of the best-preserved townhouse complexes in the nation. Vastly expanded by Governor and Mrs. William Aiken, Jr. in the 1830s and again in the 1850s, the house and its outbuildings include a kitchen, the original slave quarters, carriage block and back lot. The house and its surviving furnishings offer a compelling portrait of urban life in antebellum Charleston, as well as a Southern politician, slaveholder and industrialist. The house spent 142 years in the Aiken family's hands before being sold to the Charleston Museum and opened as a museum house in 1975.

Pass By: Mother Emanuel AME Church, 110 Calhoun St, Charleston, SC 29401, USA

The church was founded as the Hampstead Church on Reid and Hanover streets. Hampstead Church was part of the "Bethel circuit" of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States, founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1816 by Richard Allen. They created an independent congregation because of a dispute over use of the black burial ground. The white-dominated churches had increasingly discriminated against blacks in Charleston, culminating in Bethel Methodist's construction of a hearse house over its black burial ground. In 1818, church leader Morris Brown left a white Methodist church in protest, and more than 4,000 Black members of the city's three Methodist churches followed him to create this new church.