The Old Negro Mart is one of the last surviving buildings in America where enslaved African men, women, and children were bought and sold before the Civil War. Located on Chalmers Street, it now stands as a museum, but in the 1850s it was a private market that where enslaved Africans were displayed.
For the first half of the nineteenth century, enslaved Africans brought into Charleston were usually sold in public auctions in front of the Exchange and Provost building. The sight of chained people being sold in the open street became so common that it alarmed some city leaders. In 1856, Charleston banned public slave auctions in an attempt to hide the cruelty from visiting strangers.
The trade did not end though. It simply went indoors.
Charleston traders began building private enclosed markets along Chalmers, State, and Queen Streets. The largest and most organized of them became known as Ryan’s Slave Mart, owned by city councilman and broker Thomas Ryan and his business partner James Marsh.
Ryan’s Mart originally covered a closed lot stretching from Chalmers Street to Queen Street. It did not only include the auction yard. It had a four story slave jail, a kitchen, and a dead house, where dead bodies were kept. This was a complete slave trading compound built to hold, manage, and sell human beings.
Slave traders used the yard to hold sales, advertise auctions, and process the people they bought and sold, and for each auction that took place, Ryan received a percentage of the profits of the auction to compliment his salary as city councilor.
In 1859, slave trader Ziba Oakes purchased Ryan’s Mart. After taking control, he built a new indoor auction gallery and named it Old Negro Mart. This new salesroom was designed with one purpose in mind: to present enslaved Africans to buyers in a private, controlled environment.
Inside the Mart
Inside the Old Negro Mart, enslaved Africans were treated like property from the moment they arrived. Traders brought them in through side entrances that kept the public from seeing the cruelty taking place.
Inside the holding rooms, people were kept in crowded spaces where they waited for their auction in the mart. Before each sale; traders inspected bodies, checking teeth, muscles, backs, and even scars, men and women were told to walk, bend, or lift objects to show strength, women were often examined for signs of fertility.
When the auction started, buyers stood inside the hall while enslaved Africans were lined up and presented one by one. Oakes or another trader called out prices and described each person’s skills, such as cooking, carpentry, farming, or household labor. Buyers asked questions, inspected the enslaved person again, and began to bid.
For the next two years, until the outbreak of the Civil War, Oakes ran auctions from this gallery, making it one of Charleston’s main centers for the domestic slave trade.
When the Civil War began in 1861, Charleston’s domestic slave trade quickly collapsed. Many enslaved Africans fled, sought refuge, or followed Union troops for safety. By the time the war ended in 1865 and slavery was officially abolished, the Old Negro Mart had already ceased operations. The building, once used for selling enslaved Africans, stood empty as a reminder of that dark chapter in the city’s history.
The building survived into the twentieth century and was later turned into a museum. It now holds documents, records, and stories of the people who passed through it.
Sources:
Part 1: Old Slave Mart and Charleston’s Historic Memory by Mateo Mérida
