I Wasn’t Taught In History Class That Slaves Were Tortured Out Behind My High School

“I don’t think there is any worse hell than that Sugar House.”

In the sixth grade in 1969, I attended a public school in Charleston, which integrated suburban whites with urban blacks for the first time. That year was chaos, reminding me of the time we are living through now. My mother was a teacher in that school, and not much learning, at least not much classroom learning, went on that year.

Entering the seventh grade, I attended a private college preparatory school on Archdale Street in downtown Charleston. I’d spend the next six years there, graduating in 1977. Today we’d call this a white flight school. I think back on the decision my mother faced in 1970. While she was a part of the culture she grew up in, she wasn’t overtly racist, in fact she taught in what today are high minority, Title 1 schools most of her career. She made the best decision she could for her child at the time.

As middle and high school students, we learned a rosy history of Charleston, South Carolina, and the United States. We were never taught that the evil institution called the Sugar House, which was a slave torture chamber, once existed around the corner from the school. One slave who experienced it remembered, “I have heard a great deal said about hell, and wicked places, but I don’t think there is any worse hell than that Sugar House.” This kind of horrific treatment of human beings was whitewashed out of the history we were taught. It’s dangerous to compare any culture to Nazis, but the history we were taught would be like German students not learning about the gas chambers. Ironically, several students in my school were Jews whose grandparents had been in concentration camps. Seared into my mind is meeting a friend’s grandmother who had a number tattooed onto her arm.

“I have heard a great deal said about hell, and wicked places, but I don’t think there is any worse hell than that Sugar House.”

I was recently challenged by a white friend about why I bring this up, because there is too much toxicity in our world during these stressful times and so many good and positive stories to tell. That attitude is why there are riots in Minneapolis and other cities in America.

Blacks in Charleston, on the other hand, remember the Sugar House existed. Its history was handed down through their mamas and grandmamas. To a large extent, blacks and whites don’t share a common history of how we arrived where we are today. In the daily experience during their lives today, people of color continue to face a legacy of racism institutionalized in our society that whites choose not to see.

There are many positive stories we should tell, if as leaders we recognize the dark strand of racism in our culture, listen to the pain being expressed by people being discriminated against today, and work together to create a more just society for everyone.