Charleston — Historic Peninsula
Charleston City Market
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
Charleston City Market extends through a long series of market buildings and sheds. It developed as a place for food and everyday goods, supplied by a city and surrounding region whose labor force included enslaved and free Black people.
Because Charleston was a major slave-trading city, visitors sometimes assume this was the location where enslaved people were auctioned. That is incorrect. The City Market was not Charleston’s slave market. Human sales occurred in other public locations and later in indoor marts such as Ryan’s Mart.
That correction does not remove Black history from this market. African American vendors and craftspeople were essential to Charleston’s commercial life. Today the market is especially associated with sweetgrass basket makers, a Gullah Geechee tradition with West African roots that developed in the Lowcountry.
Sweetgrass basketry is not simply a souvenir style. The techniques connect generations of Black artisans to rice-growing landscapes where African knowledge was crucial to plantation production.
So the market illustrates a broader rule: do not look for Black history only where a plaque says “slavery.” Black Charlestonians made commerce, culture, religion and craft throughout the city.
The correct story is richer than the false one. This was not a slave auction hall; it was a marketplace inside a slave society.