Feeling the cobblestone beneath my feet, I listened as the moss swayed from the trees. 

The sun wasn’t as hot and the streets grew quieter as the nightlife slowly died down. As I walked farther down the road, toward the light on the corner, my skin was full of goosebumps. My body quickly got chills. What looked like a stone bench sat at the end of the street, outside a house much bigger than a mansion. A man stood beside it, staring at the markings that were engraved on the top. Though I didn’t catch his name I took the place next to him, and soon we were both staring at the rock. 

“What is it?” I finally asked. 

He turned his head slowly and looked me in the eyes, saying, “You see these markings?” I nodded as he proceeded, “This is where chains held the slaves.” He motioned me to touch it and gave a faint smile. “Our history is hidden within cities and neighborhoods like this,” he said. “Here lies an auction block.” 

Underneath the streetlight, the man proceeded to tell me a story that was passed down from his grandmother. A little girl, a few years younger than me, once stood on the block. Her skin was rich in color, kissed by the sun, and her hair was coarse, wrapped in a scarf. The ships anxiously awaited their new arrivals, and many plantation owners gathered. Displayed one by one, the slaves stood in a row, looking down at the shackles around their ankles. A little girl was quickly sold to the highest bidder and searched the crowds for her mother. The two had barely spoken but they hugged one another anyway. Removing her scarf from her head, the girl’s mother packed her a sack. Inside, a few nuts for her travels. Without shedding a tear, the mother watched as her daughter was ripped away from her and boarded one of the numerous ships in the harbor. The two never saw each other again. When the man finished the story, I looked up at the trees, trying to force my tears back to where they came from. 

He went on to explain that Charleston was the former capital of slave trading in North America. Home to the rice and indigo industry, it served as a market where anyone could buy, sell, or trade their slaves. 

According to historical records, about 40% of the enslaved population in what would become the United States passed through Charleston’s harbors and touched the beaches now lined with tourists. Walking alongside the shore, I could feel the presence of those who came before me and listened intently to hear their cries from the sea as the wind carried their whimpers. 

South Carolina is beautiful in April. In the sunlight, the palm trees are a fluorescent shade of green, and it creates shadows that dance on the cobblestone. The houses are lined in rows, each with a different coat of paint that compliments the one before it. Along the water, the air is salty, but the marsh grass makes it hard for anyone to want to dip their feet in. It isn’t like what the man had described to me. Walking down Rainbow Row, all I could think about was how expensive it must be to live in one of these houses. Little did I know that the bricks beneath my feet had been laid by the enslaved. 

Large plantation-style homes stood tall in the city, untouched and full of the kind of history people choose to ignore. The man turned away from the stone and continued walking down the streets. My interest was piqued, and I couldn’t help but follow. 

“Tell me more,” I said to the man, still not catching his name. As we walked, I could tell he had more to say, and I started to get embarrassed by how much I didn’t know. He asked if I was really ready to hear his stories, saying, “I won’t lie to you, this is not a happy story.” I nodded and held my breath as he began to speak and looked down the long, winding path ahead. 

Houses, on both sides of the streets, closed their hospitality doors, and porch lights grew dim. The man explained that slaves worked in rice fields – a humid, muggy environment, dragging through water up to their knees. The marshes were full of bacteria that caused one’s lifespan to shrink to a mere seven years after arriving here, and the blistering southern sun only made conditions worse. While some people cleared land to make way for new plantations, others were forced to harvest the rice in wetlands that stretched across 160 miles. Slaves were faced with the threat of diseases, such as malaria, that took their lives in large numbers. The man continued, “By this time, slaves became more than 70% of the city’s population.”

The night was settling. Streetlights created halos, depicting silhouettes of people and horses pulling carts. I felt the hairs on the nape of my neck stand. The man stopped walking and stood in front of a chain-link fence that divided us from a house with boarded-up windows. The grass in the front yard was overgrown, and it looked as if no one had stepped foot inside of it for years. Looking up at the three-story home, I noticed the windows weren’t boarded like the lower levels. A grand staircase on both the right and left led you to the door in the center. The columns stood tall, guarding the entryway. 

“This is the kind of history they won’t teach you in school,” the man sighed. He gestured to the windows and a small door just under the staircase and said, “That’s where they kept us,” referring to a house not as large as the first one, but with an equally painful history. 

“In there?” I pointed. 

The man nodded and explained that slave quarters were separate but closed off so they couldn’t escape their owners’ grasp. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, about one-third of the enslaved, kidnapped people who landed in South Carolina died within a year. The city of Charleston is an unrecognized tombstone.

By the time we reached the church, I knew we had come full circle. I could hear the bullfrogs croaking, and we were temporarily blinded by the headlights of cars whizzing past us. My feet were sore and the breeze grew cold. . . faint lights shining from inside the window as silence fell outside. The three doors at the top of the steps seemed more inviting than the ones I’d seen before. From across the street, the man read aloud the plaque on the outside: Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. 

“Do you know what happened here?” the man asked as he took a seat on the curb. I shook my head and collapsed to sit beside him, finally off my feet. When the man spoke again, I heard his voice crack slightly before he stated, “A white male fired 70 rounds on a group of people.” My hands were growing cold. I placed them in my pockets and listened. “Race hatred is what drove him, the same drive that was initiated nearly 200 years ago,” he finished. 

I stared at the building for a little while longer, refusing to let in the images that knocked on my mind’s door. “So when does it end?” I asked. 

Without reply, the man simply stood up and wiped the dirt from his jeans.