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Woodlands Plantation was the home of William Gilmore Simms, a 19th century American literary figure. He lived there with his family and approximately 70 members of enslaved African American families. The descendants of some of these families have maintained a connection with the Simms family and the land to this day. Woodlands is still owned by the Simms descendants.
With an extraordinary collection of historic images and documents, oral histories, as well as family photographs (19th and 20th century), “home movie” film footage (beginning in 1942) and “home video” footage (from 1968 to the present), this unique program documents the living descendants’ efforts to examine the persistence of the relationship and expose the myths that sustained the connection through more than two centuries.
The descendants of slaves and slave owners of Woodlands Plantation have for generations passed down stories and anecdotes about the relationship that existed between their families. It was while independently researching their families’ history that three descendants (below) of the families met and began to uncover through family interviews and archival evidence the unspoken “truths” about the old relationships. |
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| Charles Orr is the great grandson of Isaac Nimmons, the slave coachman of Woodlands who left after the Civil War. Charles is a social worker in Detroit, a writer, historian, and a collector of African American popular art. |
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| Rhonda Kearse is a descendant of Jim Rumph, who was born in Africa in 1810 and died in 1922 at Woodlands. His descendants remained closely connected to the white slave-owning family—the Simms—after the Civil War. Rhonda was born in New Jersey and is an architect with the New York/New Jersey Port Authority. |
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| Felicia Furman is a descendant of William Gilmore Simms, the last slave owner at Woodlands. She left South Carolina in 1978 and now lives in Boulder, CO. She is the producer/director of Shared History. |
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| Shared History is structured around the encounters of these three descendants and members of their families as they begin to speak as honestly as they can with each other about the old and new evidence of their relationship. The characters in this drama are both living and dead. And though the dead can no longer speak for themselves, their potency persists in the way they inform the living through their historical lineage, their remembered stories, and their racial legacy. The living participants are as diverse as any American story. They include farmers, architects, students, teachers, stock brokers, hairdressers, gospel singers, matriarchs, and social workers. |
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