There are places along Highway 174 that Edisto Island’s many visitors pass by never knowing that many of these places provide windows into the island’s storied past.

One of those places is the Edisto Island Community Center, which now serves as an area for residents to get together for events like oyster roasts, meetings, and a variety of different t community-based events.

But long before it was the community center, it was a school.

When the Civil War swept through the nation, the grandeur that had existed on Edisto was almost completely destroyed. The lavish lifestyles led by many of the residents on the island were gone and all the benefits of that lifestyle went along with it.

One of those benefits was education.

Traditional education was gone. There were no schools for the formerly rich plantation owners’ children to go to and there was absolutely nothing and no one looking out for the children of the newly freed slaves.

Children during this time had to be taught the basics by their families. However, this wasn’t always so easy. Not everyone, no matter how wealthy they had been, knew all of the basics, so whatever they knew was then taught to their children.

To make matters worse, beyond the basics, education petered out for the most part as children had to start working to help provide for their families. This meant that the children who were once educated by the best and brightest on the island or in Charleston’s austere schools and primed for college, were now focused on nothing more than getting by to the next day.

Over time, some children were taken into Charleston to attend schools that were slowly being rebuilt; after all, the Civil War didn’t just mean the end of grandeur on Edisto – it was the end of grandeur all throughout the south, including Charleston. But most children had to wait for new schools to open before they could expect any sort of formal education.

Eventually, a school did develop on Edisto and that was the Borough School for white children. Erline Jenkins was the teacher for the entire school and she was hailed as one of the greatest Edistonians of all time for her efforts.

A short while later, another school opened for older students called “Sea Island.” This was also a one-teacher school.

For years children on Edisto accepted these schools and relied upon the tireless teachers (two teachers in all) to provide them with all of the knowledge they needed. But after time, changes continued to happen and the nation began to rebuild itself. South Carolina was still incredibly impoverished, but basic needs were coming back to the area, including formal education.

By 1925 the separate schools on Edisto merged and formed the Consolidated School, which is what is now the Edisto Island Community Center.

This new building had three classrooms, an auditorium, library, dining room, and kitchen. It was used by the community as well, much like it is today, for meetings and fun events like plays and other forms of entertainment.

The old buildings were given the blacks on the island, who were taught for more than 60 years by Jane Edwards. Read more about her efforts in educating Edisto’s youth here.

In addition to the new schools on Edisto, a legislative program passed in the state opened doors for youth all over the state.

This program created several state colleges that focused on agriculture and teacher-training. Two schools that Edistonians benefitted from included the Clemson College for men and Winthrop College for women, both of which were created in the late 1800s.

Scholarships and tuition exemption programs were also available so that the most ambitious students were able to take advantage of the programs and achieve a college education.

The children who were awarded the scholarships had to only pay for boarding and laundry.

What was really impressive is that almost every child, boy or girl, who graduated from high school on Edisto went on to either Winthrop or Clemson.

This was a markedly different path than the children who just a mere decade before them faced only the bleakest of futures.

The education on Edisto carried on much the same way until the 1960s when the Jane Edwards Elementary School was built and the old consolidated school was turned into a community center. Nowadays, students living in the town of Edisto Beach can go to school at the beach school located at the civic center on the island or Jane Edwards Elementary School.

Middle school and high school students attend school in Walterboro or Charleston as there are still no educational facilities for children in grades 8-12.

As for the old consolidated school, which helped get Edisto’s residents back on their feet, it still has ties to the education world as every year it serves as a place for community members to get together and collect school supplies and uniforms.

So the next time you find yourself driving down Highway 174, take a look at the Community Center and know that at one point in time, that building was a place of great change on Edisto Island.

When slaves on Edisto were not working for the plantation families, they were working for themselves.

Most slaves were given a small plot of land they could cultivate and a cabin. Each week they were given a ration of food that consisted mostly of potatoes, corn, rice, salt-pork, molasses, smoking tobacco, and collard greens.

Vegetable soup was also purported to be one of the things field workers were given daily by the planter, which could not have been pleasant – imagine eating hot vegetable soup in the middle of July while working in a cotton field.

In addition to food, slaves on the wealthiest of plantations were given chickens and a pig to raise on their land to feed their families. They could also sell the eggs in town and make some money for themselves.

To balance out their diet (although that was not the intention of plantation owners) slaves were able to have unfettered access to the edible creatures in the creeks and nuts and berries on the property.

As for housing, some slaves had nothing more than ramshackle structures with dirt floors to two-bedroom wooden cabins with plank floors, fireplaces, sleeping lofts, and windows.

It is said that throughout the south, slaves on Edisto while by no means had a desirable life, they lived in better conditions than other slaves because the plantation owners on Edisto were so incredibly wealthy they were able to give their slaves more. But when it gets down to it, these people were denied their basic rights as humans, so while they may have had better living conditions than their counterparts on other plantations throughout the south, they were still enslaved. This fact is why no matter what the conditions were, many times slaves tried to escape.

Some went about this peacefully and would save up the meager earnings they received from selling eggs or doing odd jobs and they would buy their freedom.

In other instances, some slaves were granted freedom once they had become so old that they were no longer seen as valuable to the plantation.

In one case, an old woman was granted her freedom because she had never complained during her time working for the plantation and was highly-skilled. But she denied the freedom that was offered to her and instead asked if her son could be set free instead. Her desire was fulfilled and her son went on to start his own business in Charleston and became wealthy in his own right.

Then there were the slaves who didn’t wait to be granted freedom or buy it for themselves, they just up and ran off. This was massively difficult because of Edisto’s geographical position. By the time slaves got far enough away from the plantation they had the difficult task of crossing the creeks and oyster beds and many times were caught just as they reached the water. These people then had to suffer through the consequences of trying to get away.

There are also reports that at one point more than 70 slaves ran off from Cassina Point plantation and managed to avoid being caught.

Then there are the sad stories about the slaves who refused to be enslaved and were killed for their defiance.

But slavery eventually ended after the nation battled itself during the Civil War. The blacks still worked for white families in many instances, but they were no longer an enslaved people. They were able to educate their children, work for themselves, and live their own lives.

Though it would be a long, long time before these same people were able to experience the true freedom that comes with rights and equality.

Evidence of the slaves that lived on Edisto all those years ago can found at the Edisto museum where there are artifacts and two slave cabins on display. Visit the museum to take a look at scenes from Edisto’s past.

Like the rest of the southern United States, Edisto Island was at one point in time the home to slaves brought to the country from Africa.

This was back in the late 1600s. At that time, Charleston was a thriving town full of white European settlers, but Edisto Island was just entering the game of colonization because, like it is now, it was so far off the beaten path that most people had yet to realize it was a goldmine of cotton, indigo, farmland, and access to the waterways which were filled with marine life.

But it was only a matter of time before all that changed.

The first white settler on Edisto Island was Paul Grimball who built Point of Pines plantation in 1683. Grimball had 600 acres of land that bordered the North Edisto River. His plantation was actually built by mostly white servants of Grimball, but once it was completed he needed someone to work all his acres, so he decided to get involved in the new business of slave ownership and it was Grimball who brought the first slaves to Edisto.

At that time, it is said that plantation owners on Edisto did not have dozens and dozens of slaves as it is sometimes depicted in Hollywood films featuring the Old South. Instead, plantation owners had only roughly six or seven slaves. However, all that changed with time and more and more enslaved people were brought into the country.

This was because white settlers quickly realized that these slaves brought with them unique skills that could make them even richer. For instance, the slaves knew how to cultivate rice because they had done that in their native land, so it was in the best interest of the white settlers to have more slaves who could work the rice fields and in turn make them wealthier by the day.

People began to take notice of what was going on on the island and more European settlers started setting up their own plantations on Edisto and bringing more and more slaves to the island.

Remember that during this time, whites thought of slavery as normal and acceptable. The Civil War wasn’t even a thought at that time and there weren’t many rich plantation owners who were willing to discuss over cocktails with other rich plantation owners that the whole slave labor thing might be considered barbaric. Instead, the act of slavery continued so that over time there were generations of slaves that were born into slavery and never knew what it was to be free.

There were four types of slaves during the time of the Atlantic Slave Trade: field hands, house servants, drivers and craftsmen. Within these types there were certain hierarchies amongst the slaves.

For instance, drivers were expected to take the plantation owners and their families all throughout town and it was expected that the drivers would know all of the important people in the community. The drivers were also required to deliver the weekly food rations to other slaves and judged the level of work done by the field workers, which gave them a certain degree of power. Drivers were allowed to use force on other slaves and acted as the voice of the plantation owners because they were responsible for seeing to it that the orders laid down by the owners were carried out.

Craftsmen were the next on the hierarchical scale. These people were talented in that they knew how to create and use tools, construct buildings or make repairs, and they were generally the go-to people on a plantation when any special skill was needed. For instance, if a wagon was broken, a craftsman was usually brought in to see what could be done even if the wagon was owned by a different plantation family.

Because craftsmen were seen as valuable, they could also earn a little money for themselves when other plantations requested their help, so that bolstered their status in the plantation system.

House and yard servants worked closely with the plantation families, but they were seen as just one step up from the lowest of the low. While some people may think of Mammie from “Gone with the Wind” as the prototype for house slave, it is important to remember that while some people did love their slaves, especially little children, these people were still enslaved human beings who were forced to be away from their real families to cater to the needs of white families, so there was not usually a strong familial bond between them.

Field workers who did the most work and made the most money for the plantation families were seen as the lowest of the low even among other slaves. These people were treated like cattle at best and were valued based on their strength. A strong man who could put in a full day’s work was the most valuable, whereas a child or older adult would be seen as very invaluable.