Sea Islands, South Carolina: 1893-1894

The relief efforts in Sea Islands, South Carolina is another example of the various types of people that Clara Barton helped. Those people are African-Americans. The white land owners were taking advantage of the African-American workers, selling them seeds and other supplies to replant and rebuild. In the end, they only needed the ends of the potatoes they were already eating. Clara Barton was able to help another type of people and bring them in to her ever-growing family.

In 1893 and 1894, Barton traveled to Sea Islands in South Carolina to help at the disaster site of a hurricane and tidal wave that left thousands dead.  The island was home to a large African-American population who were being discriminated in relief aid.  In the first few days after her arrival, Barton wrote of some of her purchases to help the “ebony-faced population” including “meat, mainly dry sides of pork, and grits, or hominy, for eating.  For planting, beside the seed contributed and the nine hundred bushels of Irish potatoes, were eighteen hundred bushels of Northern Flint seed corn.”[1]  The food and supplies were gathered after Barton evaluated the scene and met with a few of the people in the town to see what was most in need.  She came to fix a problem, to aid disaster relief, and to start the rebuilding process. 
Barton arrives at Sea Islands amidst all the supplies donated to aid the African-American residents

 

The African American population that Barton desired to help had already seen some relief from white merchants on the mainland.  Susan Finta, park ranger with the National Park Service, described the scene as white business men selling the islanders seeds to rebuild the potato crop and the economy.  In doing so, these business men cheated the African American’s out of money because potatoes can be grown by cutting off the ends of old potatoes and planting it in the ground; seeds are an unnecessary material.  Barton went to Sea Islands and taught the blacks how to take care of themselves and not be taken advantage ofby the wealthier whites.[2]

Red Cross tents set up in a warehouse to partition rooms for volunteers to catch a quick sleep on while helping efforts

The potato that Barton brought to Sea Island had never been grown there, and Barton worried the first bushels would be eaten, rather than planted and used to grow more.  Barton wrote of the experience of getting the potatoes in the ground: “some forty women were hired to come over from the islands and cut potatoes for seed—every ‘eye’ of the potato making a sprout—these distributed to them by the peck, like other seed.”[3]  Barton’s use of workers reopened the work force as well as promoted economic growth with the start of a potato crop. 

By teaching the African Americans to plant potato ends to grow new potatoes, Barton modeled the family vegetable garden, a prominent domestic task in the lives of middle class women.  Women in the nineteenth century tended to small gardens that provided food like tomatoes for the table.  Therefore, the planting and tending to the potato crop was something that Barton and other women were accustomed to as a farm chore, tying relief efforts once again to the daily tasks of a woman in the domestic sphere. 

A room set aside for receiving supplies for disaster relief. This particular room was designated for clothes for the people of Sea Islands in 1893