ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION On almost any school day in Charleston, South Carolina, school buses wind their way along Ashley River Road, bringing students to experience their state’s history at Middleton Place, an eighteenth-century rice plantation that has remained under the stewardship of the same family for over 320 years. The educational activities for students at Middleton Place are diverse and multi-disciplinary. Some of them center on the
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two-family duplex once occupied by former Middleton family slaves. Between these two houses-the elegantly furnished South Flanker (with its Benjamin West portrait of Arthur Middleton, signer of the Declaration of Independence) and the modest former slave quarters (the site of Middleton Place’s permanent exhibit on African American history)—there is a social, cultural, and economic contrast, and a centuries-long history that powerfully underscores both the range and educational importance of historic house museums.
