Former Mayor Joe Riley met Edward Ball at a private downtown home on Meeting Street in the mid-1990s. Ball was doing research for the book he was working on, “Slaves in the Family.” The volume would go on to win a National Book Award.
“I was very intrigued, to say the least, with what he was doing,” Riley said, adding that his conversations with Ball revealed how little the mayor knew about enslaved people and their experiences in Lowcountry. “It wasn’t something discussed, it wasn’t something studied.”
When “Slaves in the Family” was published in 1998, Riley devoured it.
“I was so taken with it, and the fact that Charleston, this community — I think the country — really knew very little of the practice and reality of enslaved people.”
Charleston, the city of his birth, the city built physically and economically by people in bondage, was at the center of this history, Riley acknowledged.
“I finished the book and said to myself, ‘We should build a museum.’ I asked my colleagues if they thought I was crazy, or if they thought it was a good idea. They thought it was a very good idea. That’s how it started.”
How the International African American Museum was made, and what it will do https://t.co/I92smYuzqp via @postandcourier
— Joe Darby (@josephdarby) June 27, 2023