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[music playing] Charleston, South Carolina-- the Holy City-- one of the most beloved cities in the South, and also my home.

Charleston is an easy place to love.

It's a beautiful, picturesque, Harbor City with nearly perfect weather.

We've got the best food, the best houses, the best hotels, the best history-- almost 350 years of it.

But whose history?

Whose story are we telling?

Because sometimes we tell ourselves stories about a place and a past that never existed.

We romanticize it.

Because when a story feels right, when it gets in your bones, when you're the hero, it can be hard to change-- even when it's not the whole truth.

Sometimes the only way to change a story is to tell a better one.

[music playing] The plantations of Charleston are often steeped in nostalgia and propped up by stories of Southern charm and grace-- stories that ignore the suffering and brutality of the Black experience at those sites.

There's a growing movement to tell the story of the Black experience in the South.

And Charleston's McLeod plantation is embracing this.

I took a tour that skipped the gone-with-the-wind version of history and immersed me in the difficult legacy many choose to ignore.

It came to life in the hands of my incredible guide-- Toby.

Right in front of us is the back of the kitchen.

And all that good food that people come to Charleston for, that food came out of those kitchens.

Those women who would bring their knowledge of sweet potatoes and cooking and spices with them, their story starts there.

This is the cold storage dairy.

In 1860, the enslaved people here churned out 600 pounds of butter.

What was the major kind of crop at this plantation?

Sea Island cotton.

Cotton?

Sea Island cotton.

I didn't think we did much cotton here.

Some of the rarest in the world.

And it was quite laborious, so they would be working from sunup till sundown.

They would bale it down into very large bags.

Those bags would go down that waterway.

I take it to market in Charleston and it would end up overseas for processing.

Wow.

So in many ways, this water is the key.

For so many reasons, the 74 to 100 souls who would live here sometimes find love here and certainly die here came up this waterway.

They came from as far away as Senegal all the way down to Angola and they did not forget who they were.

They brought their heritage, their pride, their family, their memories.

They brought all of that with them when they came.

It's a very interesting thing about the people who got off those ships.

They would settle along the Sea Islands and they would become what we now know as the Gullah Geechee community.

Being three generations away, that makes me proud Gullah girl.

The word Gullah, where does it come from?

Well, different thoughts.

I generally talk about it as being the framework of both the language, the culture, all of that good food, the faith, the worship, and it continues to evolve.

The Gullah culture is still very, very much alive to this day.

We walked towards the waterway that had carried so many into bondage.

And as we did, we passed a cemetery of unmarked graves.

One of the Gullah beliefs is if you're buried near water, it helps your journey home.

And for an enslaved person, if you can't be free in life, at least I can be free in death.

If we were to go to the ride, we'd end up back downtown in the harbor of Charleston.

If we were to go three months more-- 8 to 12 weeks-- depending on weather conditions, then we would end up on the West Coast of Africa.

When we think about this water, we also think about it as an escape point for a man named William Dawson and nine others who left McLeod in 1862.

We think that they went to the left, went around the Stonow, ended up at Folly, where they presented themselves to the union.

They would have been considered contraband, so they would not have been returned to McLeod.

They took a lady with them named Rose.

Rose had a 14-month-old baby.

And I wonder whatever happened to her.

How did she survive with a baby?

But it also tells us how bad things were that they would risk leaving at that time.

Yeah, I mean, this is one of the messy parts of living in the low country.

It's so beautiful on one level.

And then there's the horror on the other.

Toby acknowledges it's at times difficult and messy to tell the story, but that's what makes it so important.

They made the courageous decision to tell the story this way.

But just my own sense is sometimes there's a little bit of discomfort about what kind of a place this is?

How do we manage this with dignity and with honor?

We are walking on the blood, sweat, and tears.

And I think that that's one of the reasons that McLeod is so special.

It is a Memorial.

But it is also a chance for us to figure out this last path, which is this path to freedom because for so long, we were told your stories don't matter.

And there were always people who were doing it quietly.

Right.

Now, there are so many more storytellers standing together.

And shout out to my colleagues across the country who do this because the emotional toil, it's a lot.

There are some days when I just go home and cry.

And then I move on because I have to come back here.

This is where those 74 precious souls would have lived.

And you would have had multiple families living in each structure managing to still be a family-- even amidst long hours of work and terrible outcomes.

And it would take place often late at night when everybody got in the house from the fields, they would be family time.

And that was very, very precious.

We are approaching one of the most popular sites-- the Wisdom Tree between 3 and 500 years old.

Wow, she's huge.

She would have seen those Africans coming across the waterway, she would have seen the folks in the field, she would have seen the enslaved children playing.

And when we talk about her, sometimes some very interesting conversations happen right here.

One man in particular, I'll never forget him, he said, I want to tell you something after everybody leaves.

And I thought, Oh, no.

Then he stood there with his daughter and she was crying.

And he said, I want you to know I was one of the worst racists in my town.

I bless my ex-wife because she worked on me.

And I said, why is your daughter crying?

And she said, because I would have never come to a place like this because I wouldn't have wanted to hear a story like this from someone who looked like you.

And so we gave each other a big hug, we talked about the value of coming to this place, that you could have conversations like this with people who are different, and leave feeling a little bit more well, maybe healed.

And this tree bears witness to all of that.

If only she could talk-- If only she could talk.

Now the burden's on you to tell the stories.

It is, but it's one that I treasure because when I think about their journey down this path to freedom, it is filled with gratitude.

All of the things that they did not get came to me.

So if I can wrap them as these young folks say with dignity and honor and continue to show people what they left us, then that's a job well done.

I love that.

I think that's good.

Don't worry.

Makeup.

Wow, it's a beautiful history the way Toby tells it.

And that's what we want to believe it is-- history.

But as they say, the past is never quite done with the present.

So here we are, almost 200 years later, having to ask some very hard questions about who our city is.

Not so long ago, one of these hard questions led to another story.

This one made national news.

Melvin Brown-- the man at the center of this controversy-- met me at a local watering hole-- Harold's Cabin.

Cheers.

Thanks for meeting me.

Thanks for having me.

So it's-- Free beer.

I know [inaudible].

This part of Charleston, I mean, we basically call it the neck, don't we?

I learned that after I moved back.

The idea [laughter].

We called it home back then.

It was uptown or West side when I was a kid.

I grew up one block that way, and joined the Navy and stayed for 20 years, went around the world, and I'm one block that way.

And you didn't get well.

Well, that's the navy man.

I mean, it's a circuitous route that you have.

A lot of people can't wait especially in our teen years to get out of this small town because we saw it then looking like this.

A lot of people like let's go to Charlotte, let's go to Atlanta.

But I said, no I think this place has potential.

I want to come back one day.

All these years later.

How's Charleston changed?

It's a great question.

You can take the whole show talking about that.

We have so many people moving here.

We have such a vibrant tourism industry the cuisine situation is out of control.

I love the changes.

I think we needed it.

We needed the injection of funds, the injection of culture, and the injection of open mindedness.

In your opinion, I mean, is it-- are we getting there?

Again, I love this city, that we're crawling in the right direction, but there's so much resistance that it can sometimes be frustrating.

But that's one of the things that made me want to come back.

I feel like I can be an advocate for change here.

And change the city he did, though somewhat inadvertently.

The South has a long history of key clubs which were basically an excuse to keep bars segregated and they were supposedly all gone.

I do remember the first time I heard your name was in relation to a social club that's just up the road.

Yeah, the Rifle club is just this place.

And then the peninsula, people just go there and have cheap drinks, shoot pool, ball, it's nothing special, it's-- It's just like, yeah.

This neighborhood went from being a Catholic, Jewish neighborhood to a working class, Black neighborhood, to current gentrified, like we'd hate to use the G-word but that's what happened.

It is G. Yeah.

Anyway, the Rifle club, though, when it was a Black neighborhood, was one of those last bastions that had not quite opened up.

There were three places on the peninsula in this neighborhood that we're still White only.

So I'm coming back to Charleston's [inaudible] and having drinks there, and they're going, hey I'm in here.

Right.

And the guys like, you need to join this club.

I was like, listen you know about the history.

They're like, Oh that's old Charleston man, you've been gone a long time.

Things have changed.

They say, let's write an application like OK. Then all of a sudden like movie cuts do.

I know, yeah.

Twelvish people were put up for admission into the club-- At the same time that I was.

There was one person that was African-American out of all of them?

Yeah.

That would have been you?

That was me.

[laughs] I didn't get in.

First emotion was just embarrassed because I stood there in front of everyone and got voted no.

And then when it was late, they asked us to leave the room while they voted.

And then when they passed the vote, and then we're all out in the hallway talking, they come back out and say the vote is done, gentlemen, come on back in.

And we're going in and then the guys like stops me.

And he goes, listen, I need to let you know you didn't get voted into the club but you're welcome to come back in.

And I was like, no, thank you.

This is not in the ancient past that we've had, that we've had this like-- This is 2018, I think.

Were you trying to make a social point?

No, when I put the application, no one called the papers.

I didn't tell anyone we can, we just did it.

Just be honest, this neighborhood has changed.

We got lots of people in tight jeans and plaid shirts-- no offense.

[laughs] [inaudible] To that.

Extremely a lot of these guys, because it's in the neighborhood, join this club.

They don't want to be a part of a club that had this specter of being White only and if we're going to make a change-- This is our guy, yeah.

Yeah.

A perfect candidate for that.

Who doesn't like this guy?

He's a veteran too.

The clubs got this history of being all for veterans, he's from Charleston, gosh, what could go wrong?

Yes, so actually, at this bar a couple of days later we're talking a friend of mine named Duane.

He's like you got to tell the story.

You going to get that word out that this happened.

I said, who cares about-- I'm talking to the neighborhood club.

He goes, man, this is a bigger picture here.

In corporate America, he said, social clubs are the linchpin of making business deals.

And talking to different people, they said Adam was a very fair reporter.

He's talking about Adam Parker-- Senior Writer at The Post and Courier.

He broke the story and then it got picked up by The New York Times, so the story got out-- and maybe not how anybody wanted it to, but it did.

After a serious reckoning, the club admitted its first Black member in 2019.

We're going to meet Adam here in a minute.

But first, let's hear what Melvin had to say about the future of this city we both love.

People really want to do better.

But at the same time, there's always a fear of change.

I'm not speaking for everybody-- I'm speaking for myself.

I don't think people so much actively hate another person for being different-- I think people have a fear of losing their station.

If you're on top.

Yeah.

Right now, I'm in a lot of these community things.

I'm involved with diversity-- You are on the top in a lot of these things.

And I'm asked, how do we improve diversity?

I was like, OK, I can think of all these different things, finding people who are in different levels who look like me and things like that.

That's like the one thing we're going to talk about that no one ever talks about is I had to convince somebody to level the playing field.

And in their mind, they're thinking how does that affect me and my station?

This is the conversation I think a lot of people are missing.

This is what I see in Charleston.

I don't think should be forced to be.

At the same time, if I don't make you think about these things you're not going to.

You won't think of it.

I don't want you to write me an apology for what happened, I want you to say, I'm listening, let's talk.

So sorry went on Yeah no I love it, man.

Quite frankly, if this community is going to be better it's going to be because of you or people like you.

Yeah, there was the song in Alexander, I want to be in the room where it happens.

I'm trying to get in those rooms.

So I never think that people need a handout-- they need an opportunity.

Any good college fund I thought was the best call it ever.

We're not looking for a handout, just a hand.

[laughs] I think that rings true today.

[music playing] Melvin is not only doing, but living the hard work of change.

This story points to the role of a free and independent press that attempts to bring to light the heart issues.

In the current political and technological environment we're, in it's becoming more important than ever.

We wanted to speak with Adam about this and the role of storytelling in the news.

He's been a reporter for 17 years at The Post and Courier-- one of the last, strong, local Southern papers.

Adam may be a reporter first, but a close second is his love of sailing.

He took us out on the Charleston Harbor on the condition that if we would sail, he would talk.

We're going to talk.

All right, let's do it.

Who's on this sheep?

I get.

All right, here we go.

Take care.

Going [inaudible],, let it back in a second, and then you can that, and pull.

The way is it-- is it stuck there we go.

You got it [music playing] After a good sail, we dropped anchor and cracked open the room.

To Charles, Salut.

Salut.

A great sail again.

People don't really always fully understand how newspapers work.

In a way, there's a lot of subjective work that goes into creating the news.

I don't mean to say that we're applying our own opinions or points of view-- what I do mean to say is that we're making decisions on what we think our readers should know about.

Professional journalists are trained to identify what's important.

Perfect example is I write about race, and history, and civil rights and this kind of thing.

And invariably, I get emails from somebody or another saying, why are you dividing us?

It's your fault-- you the journalist-- the newspaper.

It's like dude, I'm just observing what's happening out there and conveying this information to readers because we think it's interesting and maybe important to know or think about it.

But because that person sending me the email would really rather not talk about race, would really rather not confront these difficult issues, he lashes out at the liberal media.

[laughs] This is just not really how it works though.

What's the importance of a newspaper for a city like Charleston or the state overall or really the National?

Oh, my god, it's critical.

A National-- I mean, honestly we all know journalism is under attack right now.

Yeah, there are two forces working against journalism-- one is economic which means cutting expenses, laying off people often, and the new technology companies that are increasingly playing this huge role in sucking up all the advertising revenue.

And then there's the cultural side-- the perspective that people have of the media, which has become very partisan as our society has become very partisan.

There's less tolerance for nuance and for debate and conversation which is what newspapers are all about.

We want to inform readers so that they can make intelligent decisions about how to live their lives.

I mean, it's really that simple.

In five years when there's no more newspapers because this feels like a relic of the past.

That's not, yeah.

That being said, we no longer have a free and independent press, what do you got at the end of the day?

I think we'll always have a free and independent press-- well always.

It doesn't take much-- it turns out-- for a country-- even a strong country with strong democratic principles-- to flirt with fascism.

But I do think our institutions are fairly strong in the United States.

And I think that the free press will persist in one form or another.

What's worrisome is that smaller newspapers that used to be able to operate without much worry, all of that has completely changed-- it's all online, the ad revenue is slowly going away.

And that's very difficult for a small town newspaper, but the role that these smaller newspapers play is really essential because they're the ones holding local authorities and officials accountable.

It's the cliche, all news is local.

I mean, it is.

Yeah.

It is.

And so you need to be able to present this to people so they're informed about what's going on in their communities.

I mean, you could put it on Facebook, you can be blustery on social media.

Yeah, then it just seems like it's somebody's opinion.

There's a role.

But there's a role for an independent press that provides some validation for the arguments that are-- There is.

That are out there.

And there are things that are important that the average person just doesn't always think about, but they're important.

And when they encounter it in a newspaper, they Oh, my God, that's messed up.

I'm not going to say it sounds elitist when you say the average person meaning us [laughs].. You guys got rid of the cartoons in our mouth.

[inaudible] Still cartoons.

Joking aside, it's a complicated issue.

If the press is making decisions about the stories they write, then acknowledging implicit bias and the lack of diversity in the newsroom is key.

Adam wanted us to meet Ricky-- a young journalist cutting his teeth at The Post and Courier, who covers similar issues and often collaborates with Adam.

We met at another favorite spot-- Shem Creek-- the Wreck.

So journalism does seem like a logical career where I could write every day.

And I haven't regretted it yet, but-- What does that mean again?

What are you doing in the world?

It's just really about just shedding light on important issues that people care about affordable housing, gentrification, and flooding.

You curate, you determine what you feel like is important based on the community.

How much pressure does that put on you to get it right?

Well, definitely it puts a lot of pressure on you.

Sometimes it can be a little intimidating because you're worried about not making an error or making a mistake.

It's also a positive as well.

I mean, The Post and Courier has a large platform to be able to give people a voice and be able to express those issues, in particularly for communities that haven't always had access to that platform, which I find particularly special.

Just to point out, in fact, we don't have a ton of African-American reporters at The Post and Courier.

No.

So how important is it for people like Ricky to come in with that voice?

I mean-- It's critical-- it is absolutely critical.

Newsrooms in general are hardly diverse enough.

Obviously, you mean, you want to have a diverse group of reporters that first of all reflect the community.

I mean, you can't cover a community that has a large African-American or Hispanic population and not have that representation in the newsroom.

Because no individual has a totally objective view of the world.

Obviously, we all have our biases and we all have our points of view.

And as journalists, of course, we're trained not to apply those biases to our work.

Sometimes it seeps in a little bit and that's what's so valuable about a more diverse newsroom.

It shouldn't matter, in my view, which individual reporter writes a particular story about anything.

Just because I'm African-American doesn't mean that I think like every other African-American.

For instance, there was a protest last summer.

I'll write a story and get criticism from people who are White and Black on all sides.

I used to work for PBS back when I first graduated from college.

And my general manager at the time, he's like, if the phone's not ringing, that's when you need to worry.

If the phone is ringing, you've actually spawned some conversation, and debate, and discussion.

There is people who are civically engaged in their local communities appreciate the local newspaper.

I mean, people who are actually like involved.

They're the people who actually make our local communities better and you guys do a great job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We try.

Free, fair, and independent-- these are the touchstones of the press and their curatorial role in the story of society.

Whether it's the press doing their job, someone speaking for the voiceless, or someone just willing to speak up, it's the storytellers that craft the world we live in.

Story is key to equity and empowerment.

The stories we tell ourselves, our friends, our children.

The stories, we bring out of the darkness and tell the world.

These are the stories that change lives and change the communities we live in for the better.

There's so much more to explore.

And we want you to join us on The Good Road.

For more in-depth content meet us on the internet at THEGOODROAD.TV.

Hear more great stories, connect to organizations, and make sure you download our podcast-- Philanthropology.

Funding for The Good Road has been provided by-- [music playing] Every road is a good road when you're behind the wheel of a Toyota hybrid-- from the Toyota Avanza and Sienna, the Highlander Hybrid and round for hybrid, and with available all-wheel drive, these vehicles are designed to go the distance.

Whether you're driving to work, school, or down the coast of Tanzania.

Proud sponsor of The Good Road.

Toyota, let's go places.

Tomorrow's breakthroughs start with the determination and inspiration of today.

AMD helps solve the world's toughest and most interesting challenges by creating high performance computing technologies.

And by Uncommon Giving, the generosity company.

At Plow & Hearth, we believe that the place you are, can become the place you want to be.

Philanthropy Journal, stories about bold people changing the world.

[music playing]