Introduction

Design Intro

This experiment is to give you freedom, position, homes, your families property, your own soil. It seems to me a better time is coming…a better day is dawning.

-General Ormsby Mitchel, speech delivered at Mitchelville, October 1862

Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park (HMFP) is located on the northern tip of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, within the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. The park encompasses over twenty-four upland acres on the site of the first self-governed African American town in the United States.  Mitchelville was established for formerly enslaved men, women, and children in 1862, prior to the end of the Civil War. Individuals and families built homes on a plotted grid of quarter-acre lots, elected their own officials, created their own system of law, built three churches and four stores, and established the first compulsory school system in the state of South Carolina.

At its peak of occupation in 1863, Mitchelville was home to more than 3,000 residents.  After the Civil War some residents moved farther inland to seek wage earning jobs.  The town was eventually devasted by the hurricane of 1893 and by the 1920s, only a few families had remained. 

However, Mitchelville’s legacy endured. It was a template for other African American towns, serving as the “rehearsal for Reconstruction”.  It gave the formerly enslaved access to the rights of citizenship that had been denied to them for many generations. For the first time, African Americans of the South could own land, exercise their right to choose who would represent them, keep their families intact, negotiate wages for labor, pursue an education, and initiate their own religious and commercial enterprises. Mitchelville was truly “where Freedom began”.  It was an apt, organized, society with the understanding of and respect for the ecological science of living in a delicate Low Country environment.

Mitchelville was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, as the Fish Haul Archaeological Site, making the site important to preserving and understanding the nation’s difficulties during reconstruction.  HMFP was formed to act as a steward for the benefit of preserving the rich history of Mitchelville and its connection to Gullah culture throughout the Gullah Geechee Cultural Corridor.  The organization has completed a Master Plan for the Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park physical plant, which will serve as the blueprint for its transformation. This plan will expand the park to include an 18,000 square foot Interpretive Center highlighting the Mitchelville story and connect it to the 21st Century. Thematically interpreted replicas of historic homes, churches, stores, and other structures will be viewed and interactively experienced.  

The Historic Mitchelville Interpretive Heritage Trail, which runs along the property’s coastal landscape, will spatially organize the designed campus park.  HMFP’s development plan includes having four sculptural installations located alongside the trail and is hosting an Art Installation Competition to include four artworks that will highlight, inform and celebrate Mitchelville’s unique story of freedom over slavery as a way of life.  The intent of the Heritage Trail Art Installation Competition is to offer opportunities for the public to contribute to acknowledgement and interpretations of Mitchelville.  Sculptures along the trail will shed light on Mitchelville’s past while invoking symbolic ways that principles of what the town historically represented are still important themes of social justice and human rights as continuing goals to achieve for today’s collective citizenry.

To that end, the design challenge will specifically focus on creative representations of Self Determination, Opportunity, Citizenship and Freedom.  Each of the four sites will emphasize an assigned theme described in the instructional design brief.  All U.S. citizens are invited to enter the competition as individuals or teams, as students or professionals.  The HMFP organization also extends this invitation to non-U.S. citizens who may participate as team members, but not serve in the role of a team leader.  Designers may respond to one installation site challenge, two, three or all four.  Entries must be submitted in digital format only.

Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park representatives acknowledge and respect that we stand on land originally occupied by the Escamacu tribal people.