The Saving Grace initiative by the Historic Charleston Foundation aims to preserve historic African American churches in Charleston, maintaining their use as active spaces for worship. By assisting with grants, partnerships, and creative funding ideas, the initiative addresses challenges like maintenance costs, declining congregations, and structural issues. Current projects focus on churches such as St. Johns Reformed Episcopal and New Tabernacle Fourth Baptist. The effort aligns with broader preservation goals to protect Charleston's heritage while supporting its living communities.
"I knew exactly what it was ... I almost cried," he says of the elongated African carnelian bead, the first of its kind found at the historic house museum in Charleston and perhaps the only artifact recovered there that survived the Middle Passage in the possession of an enslaved person.
Excavation is underway Friday underneath the Nathaniel Russell property's kitchen house. Archeologists are trying to learn more about the slaves who were forced to work for some of the city's most prominent people.
The oral history project complements a Preservation South Carolina church restoration in its early phases. The 1772 Foundation, Historic Charleston Foundation and South Carolina Humanities are providing $25,000 for the oral history project that is expected to be completed in early fall, said WeGOJA’s executive director Dawn Dawson-House.
In 1975, everyone in Saigon knew the war was ending. My father urged me to flee and gave me the equivalent of 25 cents. I went to the U.S. Embassy but could not get in, so I ran to the barges leaving in the river on April 30.
Last week, Charleston by Design kicked off the month-long Charleston Festival (through April 14) with a celebration of the South Carolina port city’s stunning interiors, landscapes, and decorative arts through the lens of preservation. In addition to lectures set in the early 19th-century Second Presbyterian Church (AD’s global editor and director Amy Astley moderated a discussion with Thomas Jayne and William Cullum of New York’s Jayne Design Studio), local designers thoughtfully contemporized the Aiken-Rhett House Museum with a series of theatrical vignettes.
A long-running Charleston event that highlights meticulously preserved homes and manicured downtown gardens is back this spring with one noticeable change in an effort to pull in a broader audience. Renamed The Charleston Festival, the popular annual fundraiser for Historic Charleston Foundation is as old as its organizing body — now in its 77th year.
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