The origins of slavery in Charleston, SC

Enslaved people on a cotton plantation

When Charleston was founded in 1670, the colony that would become South Carolina was envisioned as a profitable outpost for England. The Lords Proprietors, who oversaw its early development, quickly realized that the wealth of the colony would depend upon labor—intensive agricultural labor to cultivate rice, indigo, cotton and other crops suited to the Lowcountry’s fertile but swampy soil. While indentured servants and some enslaved Native Americans initially supplied part of that labor, it was the forced importation of Africans that transformed Charleston into the hub of slavery in North America.

The very first enslaved Africans in the colony likely arrived with the English settlers from Barbados. Many of these colonists already practiced slavery on their Caribbean sugar plantations, and they carried the institution with them to the Carolina coast. In fact, the “Barbadian model” became the blueprint for Charleston’s system of slavery: large estates worked by enslaved people, strict racial codes, and an economy dependent on forced labor. Records from the 1670s show Africans arriving in small numbers, sometimes alongside cattle and provisions, treated not as people but as property.

Charleston’s location on a deep natural harbor gave it a grim importance in the transatlantic slave trade. By the late 17th century, ships from West Africa began arriving directly, carrying men, women, and children who had survived the horrific Middle Passage. The first major documented shipment of enslaved Africans into South Carolina came in 1670, the same year Charles Town (as it was then called) was founded. Over the next decades, the numbers increased steadily. By 1708, the colony had a Black majority—an extraordinary demographic shift that underscored just how central slavery had become.

The Africans brought to Charleston came from diverse regions—Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Angola, and the Windward Coast. Many carried with them specialized knowledge of rice cultivation, which planters soon exploited to build immense wealth. The tidal rivers and swamps around Charleston proved ideal for rice fields, but they required backbreaking labor under brutal conditions. The skill and expertise of enslaved Africans made Carolina’s rice plantations among the most profitable in the New World.

Charleston itself became the largest slave port in North America. It is estimated that nearly half of all enslaved Africans brought into what would become the United States passed through its harbor. Once ships arrived, the human cargo was sold at public auctions or “Negro yards,” where families were often torn apart. From there, many were sent to inland plantations, while others remained in the Lowcountry to work on rice or indigo estates.

The legacy of this early history is immense. The Gullah culture of the Lowcountry, with its distinct language, foodways, and traditions, grew out of the blending of African cultures among enslaved people. Yet the origins of slavery in Charleston also represent one of the darkest chapters in American history—a system rooted in violence, coercion, and the denial of human dignity. From the very first Africans forced onto its shores, Charleston’s prosperity was built on the backs of enslaved labor, and its role as a central entry point ensured that the city would remain at the heart of American slavery for nearly two centuries.