You’ve probably never heard of Mitchelville – but it might be the most important place you visit in South Carolina

Mitchelville Historic Freedom Park on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina stands in the place of the first self-governed town in the United States of formerly enslaved people - (Visit Hilton Head)

We leave the woodland with the morning sunlight filtering through the trees. Soft pine needles carpet the earth beneath our feet. Following a wooden walkway that crosses the marshland, we reach a small gazebo and look out towards the Atlantic Ocean. It was in this spot 160 years ago that formerly enslaved African American men and women would have watched to see the boats come in with the news of the passage of the 13th amendment; a change to the US constitution that formally and completely abolished slavery throughout the United States.

This is just one of the stories that Lola Campbell relays to me as we explore Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park on Hilton Head Island in America’s Deep South.