![]() ![]() Reading the Emancipation Proclamation to the 1st South Carolina Voluntary Infantry Regiment, USA, January 1, 1863īy 1708, the enslaved Africans and their descendants in South Carolina had become the majority of the colony’s population of approximately 8,000 people. Capitalizing on their extensive trade with Barbados, which already had a well-established pattern of African slavery, the South Carolina planters began to import enslaved Africans from Barbados and other West Indian islands and eventually directly from West Africa. The first planters also discovered that Africans from Senegal and other traditional rice-growing regions of West Africa would be the best workers to produce this crop. ![]() The early settlers by 1700 discovered that rice was the cash crop best suited for South Carolina’s semi-tropical climate. The first English settlers arrived in 1670 and founded Charleston. When the colonial settlement failed, those Africans joined and became absorbed into the Native American population. ![]() The first Africans to arrive in South Carolina likely came in 1526 as part of the San Miguel de Gualdape Colony organized and sponsored by Spain. ![]() By 1708 South Carolina became the first British North American colony to have an African American majority. ![]()
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