Donated by Dr. Lois Fries, these artifacts were collected in the early 1920s by Reverend Robert and Jennie Oberly. The Reverend and his wife were missionaries to Liberia for the United Lutheran Church.
Cast net fishing is a significant part of history in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Africans transported to the Lowcountry, later known as the Gullah people, brought with them skills in boating and fishing. Seafood was plentiful on the South Carolina coast and barrier islands (sea islands) and made up a large part of the diet, …
The Leo S. Carty Watercolor Print collection contains nine signed and number prints by Leo S. Carty (1931-2010). The primary focus of Carty’s paintings are the daily life of blacks in the Virgin Islands at the turn of the 20th century. Leo S. Carty (1931-2010) was born in Harlem, New York on April 17, 1931. …
The Keith and Charlotte Otterbein collection contains straw objects obtained while doing ethnographic work in Nassau, Bahamas between 1959 and 1987. Many of the items in this collection were made by individual Bahamian craftswomen (also called “plaiters”) who maintained their independence in the straw industry, while four were sold in the Nassau straw market, thus …
The Katherine Nicklaus Collection contains two female carved wooden masks whose origin was the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly known as Zaire).
The Coards Studio was a photography studio owned and operated by Joseph and Rachel Coards in Charleston, South Carolina. Coards photographed African American families and individuals in the studio and various events and groups outside of the studio, such as graduations, weddings, and other ceremonies. The studio, located at 78 Line Street, closed in the …
African American anthropologist Joseph Allen Towles (1937-1988) met British anthropologist Colin Macmillan Turnbull (1924-1994) in 1959. The two exchanged marriage vows in 1960 and they lived together in an interracial, homosexual relationship until Towles’ death in 1988. Towles and Turnbull spent various periods of time in Africa, conducting fieldwork on the Mbuti, Mbo, and Ik …
The Johannah Gold collection contains objects from Mrs. Gold’s family relating to the history of farming in the Lowcountry.
The collection contains, primarily, the correspondence of Isaiah Bennett, President of the Charleston Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute. Isaiah Bennett (1926-2002) served as a union representative for tobacco workers at the American Tobacco Company’s “Cigar Factory” and as a leader and negotiator of the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike of 1969. Bennett also founded …
The Herbert A. DeCosta, Jr. Papers include materials related to the professional and personal life of Herbert DeCosta, Jr., his wife Emily, and numerous Craft, Crum, and DeCosta family members. Namely, the walking cane of Dr. William Crum.