“Here [in Charleston] is a subtle flavor of Old World things, a little hush in the whirl of American doing. Between her guardian rivers and looking across the sea toward Africa sits this little Old Lady (her cheek teasingly tinged to every tantalizing shade of the darker blood) with her shoulder ever toward the street and her little laced and rusty fan beside her cheek, while long verandas of her soul stretch down the backyard into slavery.”

—W.E.B. DU BOIS, 1917