“The Inner Passage” // Ginna Richards

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Charleston Library Society

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CLS The Inner Passage

April 28 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

$10.00 – $15.00

A highway centuries older than the ones we travel today, there exists a largely undocumented 300-mile network of colonial-era canals connecting our Lowcountry rivers for the purpose of travel, trade, and survival. We are incredibly honored to host Virginia McGee Richards for the launch of The Inner Passage, the result of a fifteen-year project to honor a deep history relatively unknown. Richards’ photographs, which were developed on site using the water of the fields and riverbanks, include portraits of Lowcountry descendants, as well as centuries-old “Witness Trees” — live oaks that still stand over the waterway, yet also witness to centuries of planting seasons, river baptism, prayers, war, poverty, massacres, and canal construction. Join us in partnership with the International African American Museum (IAAM) to explore a collection of part fieldwork, part excavation, and an overall deeply important collection of work, along with an essay by Dr. Imani Perry offer a powerful living map of history.

If you are unable to attend the event but would like to purchase one or more signed copies, please visit Buxton Books.

Prior to the program, we invite our Fellows Members to enjoy Happy Hour from 5:00 – 6:00 pm, downstairs in the Dr. Suzan D. Boyd Fellows Club Lounge.

About the Book

A deeply moving photographic and narrative history of a southern waterway that the enslaved were forced to build for mercantile shipping—but which they used to escape slavery.

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida.

In this book, Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history.

About the Author

Virginia McGee Richards is a nationally recognized documentary photographer and historian who lived in South Carolina for over a decade. She began work on photographs for The Inner Passage series after swimming in a local creek near her home in Charleston. Curious about the creek’s origins, she went to the local public library and learned that her swimming hole had been originally constructed by enslaved laborers in the early 1700s. For over fifteen years, Richards read archival documents and studied colonial maps to piece together the story of the Inner Passage. The waterway, which was constructed as a shipping lane for planters’ commodities, also served as an important route to freedom for enslaved and indentured people.

A feature of Richards’ photographs and research, “What the Haunting ‘Inner Passage’ Represented to the Enslaved” appeared in Smithsonian Magazine (March 2022) and was awarded “the best in print and digital journalism” by the American Society of Magazine Editors. Her photographs received the Gold Medal Prize at the Lowell Thomas Competition (March 2022) and appeared in a juried show at the North Carolina Museum of Art. They have also been exhibited at The Light Factory in Charlotte, North Carolina, and at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and Cincinnati Museum Center. The UNC Carolina Alumni Review magazine featured Richards’s work in “Uncharted Waters, Uncharted Ground” (August 2020). Richards is currently a Photojournalism Fellow at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado (2021-present).

About the International African American Museum

The International African American Museum tells the unvarnished stories of the African American experience across generations, the trauma and triumph that gave rise to a resilient people. Located on the site where almost half of all African captives arrived in the U.S., the International African American Museum will share the untold stories of the African American journey at one of our country’s most sacred sites.