African Americans at Snee Farm Plantation, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina

Gibbs, Tyson

Snee Farm is an important plantation because of its direct linkage to the life of one of the signers of the United States Constitution, Charles Pinckney. The National Park Service commissioned several reports –archaeological surveys, examinations of the owners, and landscape surveys - to develop a full history of the plantation. Several books have already been written about Charles Pinckney and his family. The role of slaves at Snee farm, however has been scantily presented in books about Mr. Pinckney. It is clear from historical records that all of the plantations east of the Cooper River had African American workers supervising the various plantation activities, including foreman, field worker and skilled and unskilled laborer. The overall objective of this project is to understand the Snee Farm Plantation and its relationship to the African American workers who provided the labor force between the years 1900 and 1968. To accomplish this, the report is broken into several specific objectives as follows: The first objective is to present a background history of the Snee Farm Plantation. The report uses data collected by the National Park Service at Snee Farm and historical documentation to describe the plantation, owners and general status of the plantation. The second objective is to document the social and cultural experience of African Americans associated with Snee Farm. The purpose of this objective is to determine the nature of the workers’ social lives in relationship to the Snee Farm Plantation. The third objective is to describe the general experiences of workers on the Snee Farm Plantation. It is clear that the slaves are not available for questioning regarding their experiences with Snee Farm. However, descendents of these African American plantation workers may shed some light on the kinds of activities that took place on the farm after the year 1900. This collection of data requires interviews with relatives, acquaintances and others associated with Snee Farm. The fourth objective is to understand the tasks and working hours of Snee Farm workers and to present information about the relationship between plantation owner and African American farm worker. Several of the informants describe the relationship between plantation owner and worker as one in which the owner treated favorite workers like one of the family.