Reconstruction Era National Historical Park

Hear words scribed by Penn School Co-Founder, Ellen Murray entwined with the words of Gullah/Geechee and African American poets on Thursday, March 19, 2026 from 6 to 7:30 pm at Darrah Hall in Reconstruction Era National Historical Park. Bring your poetry and be part of this circle hosted by poetress Eboni Holmes.

The Northwest Quadrant is a historically African American neighborhood with roots deep into the Reconstruction era and Port Royal Experiment. On May 2, as part of the annual Taste of Beaufort Festival, the Northwest Quadrant Neighborhood Association will hold a community celebration at the Washington Street Park. As part of this event, park staff will lead one hour, one mile walking tours of the Northwest Quadrant, highlighting the recently restored 1313 Congress Street. These tours will begin at the Washington Street Park. 

Popular narratives of 19th century Chinese communities in the United States tend to focus on their experiences as laborers on the railroads of the American West who later navigated the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Lesser known are the experiences of Chinese who found themselves working and living in the South, including Beaufort’s very own Charles Chin Sang. As a prominent landowner and one of Beaufort’s only Chinese residents in 1900, Sang established a remarkably rich life for his family, despite the strong anti-Chinese sentiment of the time. Park intern and PhD candidate at UT Austin, Rivers Liu, will examine Sang’s legacy by exploring the shifting meanings of citizenship, race, and land produced in the wake of the Civil War.

Park intern and recent USCB History Department graduate, Aidan de la Torre, has been researching the census records taken around Beaufort during Reconstruction. This presentation will explore how the population of Beaufort changed after the Civil War by analyzing the US Censuses taken during the area, and examines exactly who made up the population of Reconstruction era Beaufort County. 

Of the estimated half million free people of color living in the United States, nearly half of them resided in the South with large, notable communities in cities like Charleston and New Orleans. While there were over 36,000 enslaved persons in Beaufort county in the 1860 census, there were also more than 800 freepeople. Park Ranger Dr. Tedi Light’s talk will trace the lives of that community through archival records that reveal the precarity of life on the fringes of a slave society and the opportunities seized during the Reconstruction Era.

One of the key stories of the Port Royal Experiment was the transition from slave labor to wage labor. But this wasn't just a simple switch for farmers to start working for wages. In this presentation, Park Ranger Dr. Chanda Powell will explore how some formerly enslaved people went into business for themselves, transforming the streets of Beaufort into a community of Black entrepreneurship in the 1870s.

In recent years, the 1863 Combahee River Raid has received a lot of attention by both historians and the local community. But those liberated that night during the Civil War were not the first to see military service as a possible path to freedom. Park Ranger Samantha Mischke will share how during the American Revolution, Patriot leader John Laurens pushed for the recruitment of Black men along the Combahee River into the Continental Army, connecting the Lowcountry experiences during the Revolutionary period with the Reconstruction era a century later.