'Not everything is pretty here': Charleston reckons with slavery and racism

[thelakelander]

(CNN) — Charleston, South Carolina, regularly is mentioned as one of the top cities in the world to visit, for many reasons: the natural, Lowcountry beauty and Spanish moss; its charm, sophistication and candy-colored houses angled toward the breeze; beaches and bottomless bowls of freshly trawled shrimp and stone-ground grits.

Also to be considered when you travel here: Visits to grand homes and sprawling farms, their pre-Civil War glory preserved down to the wallpaper, furniture, chandeliers. One envisions, perhaps, the dashing Rhett Butler and carriage rides, slow evenings on the veranda, elegant dinners.

Perhaps. If you're White.

Despite the city's beauty, this image is not a complete version of history.

Behind those stately homes either in the downtown or on those farms -- plantations -- often are smaller ones made of stone or wood, utilitarian, without verandas, elegant furniture, sweeping staircases or laughing men in fancy suits.
These are slave quarters.

Charleston, as did the rest of the South, grew and thrived because of the unpaid labors of African men and women who had been kidnapped, beaten, raped and enslaved. The plantations that produced rice and cotton and sugar, or processed indigo, all prospered at extreme human cost. The in-town homes and their white owners were tended to and cared for by enslaved men and women.

The Holy City is undeniably popular. The town's thriving tourist industry brought in $8 billion in 2018, and has grown by about $26 million yearly for the past five years.

Full Article: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/charleston-south-carolina-tourism-racism/index.html