♪ opening music ♪ ♪ >> Hello, I'm Beryl Dakers.

Welcome to Palmetto Scene.

In tonight's program, we'll spotlight nature with the amazing story of the whimbrel and we'll visit a special Juneteenth Celebration.

First, however, in a previous episode, we shared with you the story of Margaret Seidler, the accidental historian, whose family genealogy search revealed a surprising connection to Charleston's domestic slave trade, but for Seidler the story did not end there.

Once she uncovered this history, she decided it needed to be shared.

♪ <Margaret Seidler> What I realized in the research was that this family by the name of Payne, P-A-Y-N-E owned a couple of buildings on Broad Street right near East Bay, and to learn that people were being auctioned off on the corner of East Bay and Broad, of course, we know the Exchange building, but then to find out as I did newspaper ad research, which is extensive, I found out that human beings were being held and sold inside the buildings on Broad Street in these auctioneers' offices.

I've documented 1100 ads and I've documented over 9200 human beings, that my family, my fourth great grandfather and his sons actually brokered the sale of, and as I got into it, I realized that this story has never been told.

This is truly history lost.

So, I determined that if I can't change the past, I need to make sure I have a visible tangible way to communicate it, and the answer seemed to be getting a historical marker placed.

My family has not owned the building since 1859.

The current owners were so generous and so kind, and agreed to having the marker placed there.

It's two buildings that are now under one facade.

Right after the marker was approved, I was trying to figure out what a next step would be.

Well I said, "Well, I want to see if I can find the descendants of people enslaved by my family, and I came across online, a book by a man named Larry Koger, that had written back in the 1980s called Black slave owners, and in that book, Josiah Payne, who's in the - who was my third great granduncle had sold two young girls Rosanna and Caroline, to a free man of color, John Morris, and shortly thereafter, William V has sold his son as well as John Morris' wife to John Morris.

So, John Morris basically buys his wife and his three children over a two year period here.

>> There was this phenomenon known as the Black slave holder, and these are Black people who owned other Black people and purchased them.

Their appearance in the historical record complicates what we know about the operation of the slave system.

<Margaret> The genealogist helped me trace the Morris family to a funeral home in Bennettsville, South Carolina, and so I sent an email and just said who I was and that I have some information about their family that was connected to my family in Charleston.

>> Before I talked with Margaret, I knew through my father, that my great great grandfather served as president of Allen University in the late 1800s, and that he was invited or nominated to serve in the South Carolina House and just to see the parallels and the similarities and to know that I am literally walking in his footsteps was just very inspiring and very sobering, because there were things that I did not know that Margaret helped me to discover about my great, great grandfather.

<Margaret> John Morris, bought his wife and son from one slave holder, and then his two daughters from my family, and when he purchased them, they were not free even though he purchased them.

That's because in after 1820 in South Carolina, in order to free someone or manumit them, it took an act of the South Carolina legislature.

So, he simply purchased them.

He paid what was called a capitation, or a head tax on them as enslaved, and they became what was called nominal slaves, slaves in name only, and they were able to move freely around Charleston.

They were able to get an education.

<Dr.

Powers> So, as long as a Black person was held in this category of slave, even if the design was benevolent, there was a certain Jeopardy and vulnerability, given the legal precariousness, of that status as slaves in this system and the way in which it operates, and in South Carolina in and after 1820, for any master to emancipate his or her slave property required an enactment, in other words, a law passed by the state legislature.

So, the chances of that happening was virtually nil.

So, there's that dimension of Black slaveholding also, in which Black people essentially own their own relatives, their own progeny, and offspring, and they held them because the law made it impossible to emancipate them.

<Mia McLeod> Learning that my great, great, great grandfather, John Morris, was, in fact, a slave holder was surprising, and just fascinating to all of us.

We were all on a call with Larry Koger and others, that Margaret invited us to participate in and just discovering that my great great grandfather, Joseph W. Morris wasn't born free, and to learn that his father actually purchased his freedom and his siblings' freedom, but they were still considered slaves, was just - it was just amazing to us.

When I went to Charleston to meet, to meet with Margaret, and just to see the signage, and to think about all of the things that I had read and learned, and discovered about my great great grandfather, not having gone back to my great, great, great grandfather, John Morris, or the fact that I'm at least a 7th generation South Carolinian.

When I think about the racial climate of today, it's just I mean, it speaks volumes about all of the things that they were able to overcome to do and be who they, who they were, and just reminds me every day of who I am, and that, you know, my ancestors did great things before me.

<Margaret> Many people asked me, why not keep it to myself, and I feel that the current climate in our country, which is also much the historical climate has had a racial divide, and I believed that if a more complete truth could be told that it would create an opportunity for conversation and discussion about what many of us haven't known and create a path for healing.

<Mia McLeod> I'm just grateful, because she, through her research and trying to trace her own ancestry stumbled on to ours and that connection, and it's really been eye opening, and I'm just grateful for it.

♪ <Beryl> Who knows what she'll uncover next.

Now here's Brittney Brackett with a great discovery on one of South Carolina's beautiful barrier islands.

<Brittney Brackett> Thanks Beryl.

This is truly an amazing story, the arrival of the whimbrel.

Now, it's been confirmed that fully 50% or more of this large shorebird population is converging on this spot at night during the species' annual migration from South America to the Arctic.

A partnership between the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has now made it possible for the world to witness this almost unheard of phenomenon.

<Abby Sterling> These birds could theoretically be coming in from a tremendous distance away.

As the tide rises and night falls, they're leaving those foraging areas where they've been eating all day and coming out to these areas that are a little bit more remote where they're safe from predators.

That was another 40 that just came in.

<speaker #2> Curlews worldwide are the group of birds that we know is prone to extinction, and whimbrel are among those.

<Abby> So, this group here is like 180, flying over us right now.

<speaker #2> Somewhere around 40,000 whimbrel have used the Atlantic flyway of North America.

<Abby> Hundreds and hundreds of whimbrels over the marsh.

<speaker #2> That population already represents a decline of about half from where they were 20 years ago.

<Abby> By now, there's literally thousands of birds all around us.

It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.

(birds squawking) 207 We won't be able to count them much longer, because it's just too hard to see them, but you can hear them calling still as they're coming in.

There's another group and another group, like gosh.

The entire point all the way to those signs is covered in birds now.

♪ <speaker #2> I think I was surprised by the just sort of the emotional weight of seeing what we're seeing.

<Felicia Sanders> These birds are really magical to watch, and when you see one whimbrel or two whimbrel or three whimbrel, that's amazing.

Then imagine seeing 20,000 Then every evening, they come back.

So, you can just be around Deveaux Bank in the evening right before it starts and see large flocks coming into the island in the spring.

♪ I've been with the department for 21 years and we go to Deveaux Bank a lot in the summer, because it's one of the most important seabird nesting sites in our state.

So, thousands of pelicans and terns and skimmers nest there, and we go there and put up signs and monitor the pelican nests, and so, I kept visiting the island and the next couple years in the spring when birds are migrating, and over the next couple years discovered that it was a nocturnal roost for thousands and thousands of shorebirds, including the pretty rare and declining whimbrel.

Whimbrel have been declining by over 4% each year.

So they're really in trouble, and they're kind of rare.

Not, you know, a lot of people have probably only seen a couple, and to see that many at one place was really important for you know, a rare, pretty substantial shorebird.

>> Felicia discovered a few years ago, that more whimbrel than have ever been counted in one place, are spending the night on this island every single night during their northbound migration in the spring.

So, whimbrel are coming all the way from Brazil and Suriname and Venezuela and the northeastern part of South America, and they're making their way all the way to the Arctic, where they make their nests, and they stop in South Carolina along the way, and they stay here for about a full month, which is a pretty substantial proportion of their year, and they're here to fatten up on fiddler crabs and other marine invertebrates that they eat while they're here, and their stop in South Carolina is really critical.

<Felicia> So, Andy Johnson with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Matt Aeberhard came down and got incredible shots of the whimbrel coming to Deveaux and leaving at sunrise.

So, for one month, every afternoon, they got inside a blind or even dug a hole and buried themselves and they spent the entire night there still, for two reasons.

One, the birds are very skittish.

So, you had to be very still to get the incredible video that they got, but also, they were very, very careful not to disturb the birds because they're declining and you know, very sensitive to disturbance.

So, just incredible effort and conscientious people to like be completely still for 12 hours from afternoon before the birds came in and then leaving their hiding place after the birds had already left for the foraging grounds every day.

<Andy Johnson>For me personally, it was a special assignment, because I worked with whimbrel sort of the first part of my career even as an undergrad studying bird biology, which is sort of how I got into this field.

I was studying whimbrel and chasing them around the Arctic and putting tracking devices on them to see where they go, and it turned out from that study that sort of Georgia, South Carolina coastal region, with sort of the low resolution of those earlier tracking devices, we knew they were coming there and depending on this region.

So, to hear from Felicia that this was sort of the place that summed that up in a lot of ways that these birds are really depending on the whole region, but using Deveaux Bank as a hub was, was an exciting bit of news on a personal level is thrilling to get to come back to this species that I had seen in different parts of the world and sort of patch this story together in South Carolina, sort of that, link in the chain.

I think seeing being out on this tiny spit of land with half of the flyways population of this threatened species, a species that's declining really rapidly, to be just sort of, on that low ground with them on these margins where the surface coming up in this king tides and threatening to over wash their last refuge is a pretty remarkable thing to just be sharing that one last little low line refuge that they rely on to complete those remarkable journeys.

<Maina> So, when Felicia discovered that thousands of whimbrel were roosting on Deveaux Bank, it was a really critical opportunity for us to not only try to document that phenomenon and understand just how many birds were using this important site, but continue that learning and research to try to understand how these whimbrel roosting on Deveaux, you know, where are they going during the day, and so we worked with Felicia back in 2019, to do a full count of the whimbrel on Deveaux Bank, and we got together, a whole team of ornithologists and other researchers to help us count, and we counted that nearly 20,000 whimbrels are roosting on this island every night during the peak of spring migration, which is about midday, and that's half of the entire Atlantic Coast population for this species, which is really quite a big deal, because this species has been declining by about 4% per year for the last 30 years.

So, in the last 30 years declined by about 50%.

So, to know that half of that population is right here in South Carolina, gives us a lot of pride and also, a lot of responsibility to figure out how we can better protect them.

<Felicia> So when we discovered Deveaux, it was kind of an aha moment like, wow, this is one of those places, like I am in the only place that a lot of these birds stop in the spring.

So, that makes South Carolina really important not just Deveaux, for sleeping every night, but also, the vast marshes that they spread out every day to feed in.

<Beryl> Juneteenth, which commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans was officially declared a federal holiday June 17th, 2021 by President Joe Biden.

Originating in Galveston, Texas, it has been a celebration of Black culture, freedom and empowerment since 1865.

Let's take a look back at the inaugural Root of Soul J19 Fest.

♪ woman singing "Lift Every Voice" ♪ >> This is the Root of Soul J19 Fest.

This is a Juneteenth festival that we have been working well over a year in planning and trying to bring to life.

Our major goal for this is obviously to celebrate the Juneteenth holiday and also highlight the history of African American culture and history here in the Low Country.

What better place to do that, than in the port of Charleston, which is where the majority of enslaved persons came in to the United States.

Looking at the history of Juneteenth and 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation was actually in effect, it just because it went to effect it did not reach the masses, and so it was a full two years later, where in Galveston, Texas, a general that came in and on behalf of the United States, informed the people that you are indeed free.

That is why they look at Juneteenth, the liberation holiday as opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation, or the 4th of July.

>> Juneteenth is a federal holiday.

That's huge.

So we're out here at the fairgrounds.

We got a lot of enthusiasm.

We got a lot of people showing up, showing their support.

<Paula Payton> Juneteenth celebration is so important.

Why?

Because you don't know where you're going if you don't know your past, and you have to know what we have gone through to get this day, 156 years later.

It's so important for me to be here today in Charleston for this wonderful federal holiday of Juneteenth.

>> It's great that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, but let's back that up with a little bit more action.

Tory>> We have to be intentional about how we educate not only our culture, but allow education for other cultures about our culture, because we talk about unity.

We talk about working together.

That is always going to be surface level unless we actually do the work of understanding each other as cultures and we can't do that if our culture is not ever really on display.

♪ drumming ♪ With that being the backdrop, additionally, we wanted to create an economic engine.

Everybody talks about doing community work, affordable housing can't happen without free money, and there are not pots of free money out there, and so we wanted to not have anybody else appropriate our history and our legacy, and we want to be able to create the economic engine.

So now, resources can flow right back into our communities.

♪ drumming ♪ <Sharon Fletcher> Last year, we didn't even know what Juneteenth was.

A lot of people did not even know what Juneteenth was.

So now that we're actually having a wonderful celebration about it, I really wanted to be a part of that.

♪ drumming ♪ African American entrepreneurs are coming forth and are doing so well, and I just I wanted to be able to fellowship and learn from these people and glean from them, and I've met some wonderful, brilliant people, some innovative minds, some very successful entrepreneurs, and I'm just grateful to be here.

♪ drumming ♪ <Tory> This is our first year, and inaugural year.

You have to be creative as to incentivizing people to come and be a part of.

So, we wanted to have the big picture, the entertainment, the national artists to come provide that value, but we also wanted to be intentional about our workshops, panel discussions, our HBCU college fair.

We've partnered with UNCF, and Department of Education to make sure that they are providing live virtual sessions for parents and students.

We partner with federal health care network, and they're providing a vaccination clinic.

So we wanted to make sure that everything that we do with this festival is intentional about empowering our community, and exposing other communities to our culture.

♪ drumming ♪ Our vision for this is for it to be an annual festival.

We've modeled this early on after the Essence festival, and what that has done for the city of New Orleans and surrounding municipalities.

We want to do the same thing here.

If you look at the Juneteenth flag and the colors, there's an expectation that it will be the red, the black, the green, but it's very white and blue and the intentionality of that flag.

You look at the star for Texas for Galveston, but also you look at the exploding star, which represents new beginning, and then the horizon which was a new beginning for the newly emancipated African Americans, but the colors were important because it's said that we are also Americans.

And I think that that's part of the empowerment that we don't have to always be at war against the powers that be.

We know that there are challenges that we're always wanting to fight, but we can fight them and still own.

We are true Americans and the empowerment for that, and that is what empowers us as we engage in our nonprofit work, as we engage in ministry.

For me as a pastor, ministry, this work, all of this is one in the same, because this is just who I am.

I believe that our lives have to be given for a purpose of empowering other people.

That's about the work of community building is making sure that we are able to see one another and actually be seen by each other.

♪ Ranky Tanky Band singing Freedom ♪ ♪ <Beryl> For more stories about our state and more details on those stories you've just seen, do visit our website at Palmetto Scene.org, and of course, don't forget to follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @SCETV #Palmetto Scene.

For all of us here at ETV and Palmetto Scene, I'm Beryl Dakers.

Good night.

Stay safe, and thanks for watching.

♪ closing music ♪ ♪