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, \u201cSlaves in the Family.\u201d The volume would go on to win a National Book Award.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very intrigued, to say the least, with what he was doing,\u201d Riley said, adding that his conversations with Ball revealed how little the mayor knew about enslaved people and their experiences in Lowcountry. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t something discussed, it wasn\u2019t something studied.\u201d<\/p>\n
When \u201cSlaves in the Family\u201d was published in 1998, Riley devoured it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so taken with it, and the fact that Charleston, this community \u2014 I think the country \u2014 really knew very little of the practice and reality of enslaved people.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI finished the book and said to myself, \u2018We should build a museum.\u2019 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\u2019s how it started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n How the International African American Museum was made, and what it will do https:\/\/t.co\/I92smYuzqp<\/a> via @postandcourier<\/a><\/p>\n — Joe Darby (@josephdarby) June 27, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n