Talk:Sullivan's Island, South Carolina

Slavery?

Was Sullivan's Island not the location of a major dock and holding pen for importing African slaves during the time of slaves in America? I believe there is a large plaque on the coast mentioning this. I heard someone claim that "half the slaves imported into America" landed there. Surely such a significant place in American history deservers some mention. -- Corvus 03:18, 9 October

This is true. I live on SI, I will go transcribe and post the text from the plaque, which at least acknowledges this aspect of history. There has been surprisingly little written about this aspect of the Island, perhaps because any possible archaelogical sites are now covered by million dollar houses, so I'm not exactly sure if I could find reliable sources to cite the location and chronology of the so-called "pest house". Cheers--Balloutofcontrol 09:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I found a link that has some info regarding slavery and South Carolina, but it only briefly mentions Sullivan's Island. The text is as follows:

After their horrific "Middle Passage," over 40% of the African slaves reaching the British colonies before the American Revolution passed through South Carolina. Almost all of these slaves entered the Charleston port, being briefly quarantined on Sullivan's Island, before being sold in Charleston's slave markets.

Here is the link as well: http://www.sciway.net/hist/chicora/slavery18-2.html. If I find more, I'll post it here.72.78.172.138 (talk) 05:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

The article currently states "nearly half of all African Americans had ancestors that passed through Sullivan's Island". If the estimate that 40% of enslaved Africans came through S.I. is accurate, then it is almost certainly true that all African Americans currently living have ancestors who passed through S.I., given the number of generations that have passed since the height of the African Holocaust. One of the statements in the article is probably inaccurate. Ggpauly (talk) 23:14, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, the figures you mention are sourced in the article. And you omitted a critical word in your quotation above (which I have placed in bold): "estimated that nearly half of all African Americans had ancestors that passed through Sullivan's Island". If you can find a reliable source the disputes that estimate, we may have something to discuss here. Cresix (talk) 23:51, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

My criticism is based on mathematics. I am not an informed person in the subject of the article, and will not correct it myself. It is mathematically impossible that both statements in question are correct. Even including the "estimated" modifier; clearly both figures are estimated. Both cannot be estimated correctly, however. Here is the reasoning: If 40% of African Americans were descended from those who passed through S.I. or had themselves passed through S.I. in 1850, then the next generation would (with perfect mixing) have 40% + (40% of 60%) = 64% descended from S.I. ancestors. The succeeding generation would have 64% + (64% of 36%) = 87%, etc. Here is a table:

gen  % S.I. descent

0     40

1     64

2     87

3     98

4     99.96

5     99.999984

6     100 (to the precision of my calculator)

Except for perfect mixing, all assumptions are historically conservative. You're welcome to try to come up with a counter-example using plausible mixing, however I assure you no reasonable model will generate significantly less than nearly 100% descent after 6 generations. In fact, it's overwhelmingly likely that well over 50% of African Americans alive in 1850 were descended from S.I. ancestors, given that several generations of intermarriage had already occurred between early S.I. ancestors and non-S.I. ancestors by that time.

The Atlantic slave trade was abolished by US law in 1808, and was blockaded by the British Navy beginning about the same time. (See Blockade of Africa) Although pirates evaded the blockade, from 1808 or 1809 until the War of 1812 Charleston was used as home port for US Navy ships patrolling the area (again see Blockade of Africa), and it's plausible that slave importation from Africa directly to Charleston through S.I. largely ceased around 1809. In this case 1 or 2 additional generations of S.I.-ancestral intermixing have passed, with a correspondingly earlier date of 100% African American descendancy from S.I. ancestors. Ggpauly (talk) 03:27, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Gobbledegook

The sentence, "The racial makeup of the town was 98.74% White, 0.63% African American, 0.05% Native American, 0.16% Asian, and 0.42% from race were 0.84% of the population. .", makes perfect sense until you reach 'Asian', it then degenerates into random words and numbers that do not parse in any language I know. 93.155.220.168 (talk) 01:48, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

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