Charleston, S.C

On visiting a new city, I usually take the hop on hop off bus tour, but none was available in Charleston, so I took a city tour with Adventure Tours.

After that tour, I concluded that  Charleston remains a solidly segregated city. (You never get a second chance to make a first impression !).

Beautiful Charleston was established in 1670,  and is named in honor of King Charles 11. It is the oldest city in South Carolina. 

During the Transatlantic Slave Trade, about 40 percent of enslaved Africans brought into the country passed through Charleston Harbor, and while many were sold around the south, a great number were kept there to enrich the greedy and brutal land owners.

It is today a very beautiful city with magnificent architecture, emphasizing the affluence of its bloody past.

It is today a very beautiful city with magnificent architecture, emphasizing the affluence of its bloody past.

 Of course, as Christianity has always walked hand in hand with slavery and oppression, on my visit there in 2024, I wasn't surprised at seeing the vast number of Churches that this one city had! (It's recorded as 400 churches).

All buildings have to maintain their original look on the outside but inside can be used for anything.  

A private dwelling

Even through my visit was so many centuries after slavery was allegedly abolished,  I had no difficulty imagining how it must have been during that horrible period and the Jim Crow era, as the disparities are still so obvious. 

For where the multi-million dollar mansions were located (average price $7 million for one of those residences, we were told), you would see the white people lolling around, tanning, walking their dogs, jogging, enjoying a leisurely life, while the black people were outside tending the lawns, cleaning and fixing the roads.

I had to shake my head in disbelief at the disparities which were so obvious today!

Interestingly, Charlson was voted seven times as the best tourist destination in the world by Travel and Leisure, we were told. And yes, you see hundreds of tourists on the streets.

 Of course, they are mostly white, and I learnt at the African American Museum, that most who visit that city, come to see if they can experience some of the 'Scarlett Ohara' lifestyle, as portrayed in Gone with the Wind!

On the table in front, roses made from sweetgrass which young afro American boys sell on the streets as they hustle to make a buck.

It was pathetic scene in such a wealthy place.

I don't know what the racial situation is in offices is, but that's what I saw on the streets outside.

The regular market where you get great Gullah art and craft.

Everything about Charleston still seems to revolve around color, I concluded.

This is the Citadel, which was established in the early 1820's with the formation of a militia and state arsenal, to defeat a slave revolt.

 In 1842, it became an academy, establishing it as the South Carolina Military Academy.

 In 1910 it was renamed The Citadel, but it took sixteen years after legal segregation ended in public schools, for this important institution to admit its first black student!

An actual aircraft on the lawn at the Citidel

You can get a tour of the city in a horse drawn carriage

This elegant jail was originally built for white prisoners!  

Senator Tim Scott

Considering its history and present appearance, Charleston is naturally a solid bastion for the Republicans. 

So, who better to try to hide the troubling realities other than the one and only Tim Scott, who is now striving to be Donald Trump's vice president!

 Despite its current distasteful racial situation and troubling past, I must commend the local authorities there for necessary futuristic action!

 For it was there at the Visitor Center that I found a restroom where women don’t have to wait in long lines while no one uses the men’s restrooms!

 You see, there, both women and men use the same restroom.

Just close your bathroom door.

I have always wondered why architects don't just design buildings with twice as many female rest rooms as men’, but this is also a solution to our problem!😆.

Yes, pretty city and fururistic, but Charleston still left me feeling depressed and uncomfortable!

.