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Urban Dialectics, Misrememberings, and Memory-Work: The Halsey Map of Charleston, South Carolina

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Abstract

In 1949, a lumber executive and city alderman in Charleston, South Carolina, named Alfred O. Halsey produced a visually unique map of the Charleston peninsula. The map highlights the fluctuations and changes of the urban landscape through time and traces the contours of historic events in the city. Although his depiction is compelling, tapping into a dialectical understanding of the city landscape, there are distinct cultural forgettings and silences in the map particularly in terms of the city’s long historical trajectory of racial inequality and systemic violence. The following discussion both unpacks Halsey’s dialectical vision of the peninsula, and indicate a space where archaeology can intervene in the gaps and silences in an act of memory-work.

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost I would like to thank fellow co-editor and long-time comrade-in-arms Alanna Warner-Smith for her support in this and all things. Martha Zierden for her advocacy, mentorship, and patience. Katherine Saunders-Pemberton for her tireless championing of preservation and archaeology in Charleston. Jennifer McCormick provided invaluable support in the archives, and I am indebted to the South Carolina Historical Society for their copy of the Halsey map and the assistance of their archivists. Alanna, Martha, Katherine, George Homsy, Siobhan Hart, Guido Pezzarossi, Katherine Sampeck, and Alan Lessoff all read drafts of this paper at various stages of completion and their input and thoughts were critical. The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) provided financial support during the writing and research of this piece. Finally, thank you, with much love, to Charleston and those who dwell in and make the city.

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  1. The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS), Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc, P.O. Box 316, Charlottesville, VA, 22902, USA

    Sarah E. Platt

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Platt, S.E. Urban Dialectics, Misrememberings, and Memory-Work: The Halsey Map of Charleston, South Carolina. Int J Histor Archaeol 24, 989–1014 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-019-00533-8

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