The Carolina trail
Four stops where chapter IV happened, from Fayetteville south to Sapelo Island: what happened at each, what you can see there today, and how to visit.
Plan the trail
- 1FayettevilleWhere Omar ibn Said wrote on the walls
- 2Georgetown CountyThe rice coast
- 3CharlestonWhere the ships came in
- 4Sapelo IslandBilali's island
Georgetown is the nearest stop to Myrtle Beach. Sapelo Island takes the most planning: the ferry runs only for booked visitors, and public tours go twice a week.
Visiting details were taken from each place’s own website or the National Park Service on October 15, 2026. Hours change; check before you go.
Where Omar ibn Said wrote on the walls
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Omar ibn Said was sold in Charleston to a man he remembered as cruel, and he ran. By the state’s account he reached Fayetteville on August 29, 1810, and was jailed as a fugitive.1 He wrote on the walls of his cell with coals from the fire, in Arabic, a script nobody in town could read.14
He was bought by James Owen of Bladen County and lived with that family for the rest of his life. In 1831 he wrote his autobiography in Arabic. He died, probably in July 1863, and was buried in the family plot in Bladen County.1
The Omar ibn Said marker
NC 210 (Murchison Road), Fayetteville
A state highway historical marker, number I-89. It reads: “Muslim slave & scholar. African-born, he penned autobiography in Arabic, 1831. Lived in Bladen County and worshipped with local Presbyterians.”1
- Open
- A roadside marker, always open
Masjid Omar Ibn Sayyid
2700 Murchison Road, Fayetteville, NC
A masjid named for him, on the same road as his marker. Its website says the building is not open at every prayer time, and asks anyone who would like to pray there to call ahead for access.2
- Call ahead
- 910-488-7322
- Website
- masjidomaribnsayyid.org
Further: the Arabic Bible procured for Omar in 1819 is owned by Davidson College.1
The rice coast
Georgetown County, South Carolina
The chapter names no Muslim in Georgetown County. This stop is here for the rice. By the middle of the 1800s Georgetown County was one of the leading rice-producing counties in the country, and every acre was worked by enslaved people.18 The Rice Museum puts it plainly: the laborers in the rice fields were primarily West Africans who had been captured and sold into slavery, and by 1840 the Georgetown District produced nearly one-half of the total rice crop of the United States.3
Historians such as Judith Carney have argued that Carolina planters prized the skills of people taken from the rice-growing coasts of West Africa. Other scholars doubt that buyers had so much choice.18
The Rice Museum
The Old Market Building and Town Clock, Front Street, and 633 Front Street, Georgetown, SC
Dioramas, maps, paintings and artifacts on rice cultivation in the county, including the tidal-flow method and the trunk docks the fields depended on, in the 1842 market building under the town clock.3
- Open
- Tuesday to Saturday, 10:30 am to 4:30 pm
- Website
- ricemuseum.org
Hobcaw Barony
22 Hobcaw Road, Georgetown, SC 29440
Sixteen thousand acres on the Waccamaw Neck, used for rice until the beginning of the 1900s, with more than 70 cultural sites, among them cemeteries and the cabins of the enslaved. The land beyond the gate is open only by guided tour, and the two-hour tour stops in one of four villages built by enslaved people and lived in by their descendants well into the 1900s.4
- Getting there
- From Myrtle Beach, about 35 miles south on Highway 17, through Pawleys Island
- Discovery Center
- Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm; Saturday, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm; 843-546-4623
- Tours
- Two hours, Monday to Friday at 9:30 am, 10:30 am, 1:30 pm and 2:30 pm; book on the website; not recommended under age 7
- Website
- hobcawbarony.org
Where the ships came in
Charleston, South Carolina
By a commonly cited estimate, as many as four in ten of the Africans brought to what became the United States first set foot on land at Charleston. Ships carrying disease were held in quarantine at Sullivan’s Island,6 and later ships unloaded at Gadsden’s Wharf, where the International African American Museum now stands.5 Omar ibn Said arrived in 1807.14
In 1790 the South Carolina House heard a petition from four men and their wives who called themselves free Moors, subjects of the emperor of Morocco, and resolved that they were not to be tried under the state’s slave code.19
International African American Museum
14 Wharfside Street, Charleston, SC 29401
Opened in June 2023 on the site of Gadsden’s Wharf. Its Center for Family History helps visitors trace African American ancestry, and the African Ancestors Memorial Garden, designed by Walter Hood, is open to the public.5
- Before you go
- Check hours and buy tickets on the museum's website
- Website
- iaamuseum.org
Fort Moultrie and the Bench by the Road
1214 Middle Street, Sullivan's Island, SC 29482
Between 1707 and 1799, four “pest houses” were built on Sullivan’s Island, never more than one at a time, to quarantine enslaved passengers who arrived carrying infectious disease.6 In 2009 the park installed an exhibit on this history, African Passages, in the Fort Moultrie visitor center.7 Toni Morrison’s Bench by the Road, placed in 2008, stands near the Intracoastal Waterway behind the visitor center.76
- Open
- Daily, 9:00 am to 4:30 pm; closed New Year's Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas
- Call
- 843-883-3123
- Website
- nps.gov/fosu
The Old Slave Mart Museum
6 Chalmers Street, Charleston, SC
The only known surviving building used as a slave auction gallery in South Carolina, built in 1859 on one of the city’s cobblestone streets.9 The City of Charleston owns it and runs it as a museum of the domestic slave trade.10
- Open
- Monday to Saturday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
- Website
- theoldslavemartmuseum.org
Bilali's island
Sapelo Island, Georgia
Bilali Muhammad came from Futa Jallon. On Sapelo he was head driver of Thomas Spalding’s plantation, and he wrote out thirteen pages of Islamic law in Arabic from memory, drawn mainly from the Risala of Ibn Abi Zayd of Kairouan. The manuscript is kept at the University of Georgia.15
His descendants are still on the island. Cornelia Walker Bailey of the Hog Hammock community, who died in 2017, traced her family to him.16 In the 1930s islanders remembered grandparents who prayed on mats and made rice cakes called saraka, from sadaqah, charity.17
Getting to the island
Sapelo Island Visitors Center, 1766 Landing Road SE, Darien, GA 31305
There are no roads to Sapelo. The state’s passenger ferry leaves from Meridian, beside the Visitors Center, and the crossing takes 20 to 30 minutes. Every visitor needs a reservation and a host on the island.11
- Public tours
- Wednesdays, 8:30 am to 12:30 pm; Saturdays except the last of the month, 9:00 am to 1:00 pm; at most 15 people
- Book
- Call the Visitors Center, 912-437-3224. Check in at least 15 minutes before the ferry
- Visitors Center
- Tuesday to Friday, 7:30 am to 5:30 pm; Saturday, 8:00 am to 5:30 pm
- Private tours
- Ask the Visitors Center
- Website
- sapelonerr.org
Hog Hammock
Sapelo Island
A living community, which its own society spells Hogg Hummock. The Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society works to keep descendant-owned land in the community’s hands, and holds Sapelo Cultural Day; its website has the date.12 Go as a guest. There is nothing to buy on a tour, so bring water and food.11 Ask before photographing people or their homes.
- Website
- sicars.org
Before you go, and after
Read Omar ibn Said’s own pages first. The Library of Congress shows his manuscript page by page, and Documenting the American South at the University of North Carolina has his autobiography in English, as it was published in 1925.1413
These are places of grief as well as memory. The Old Slave Mart and the Bench by the Road ask for quiet, and Hog Hammock is somebody’s home.
Read chapter IV: Across the WaterThe study pack for a group visitThe atlas
Sources
- North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Highway Historical Marker I-89, “Omar ibn Said ca. 1770-1863,” with its essay. dncr.nc.gov
- Masjid Omar Ibn Sayyid, Fayetteville, home page. masjidomaribnsayyid.org
- The Rice Museum, Georgetown, About. ricemuseum.org
- Hobcaw Barony (Belle W. Baruch Foundation), Visit and home page. hobcawbarony.org
- International African American Museum, home page and Building and Garden. iaamuseum.org
- National Park Service, The Bench By the Road, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. nps.gov
- National Park Service, African Passages Museum Exhibit (news release, March 2, 2009). nps.gov
- National Park Service, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, Operating Hours and Seasons. nps.gov
- National Park Service, Old Slave Mart. nps.gov
- The Old Slave Mart Museum, City of Charleston, home page. theoldslavemartmuseum.org
- Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve, Visiting Sapelo Island, Public Tours and Contact Us. sapelonerr.org
- Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society (SICARS), home page. sicars.org
- Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina, Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina, 1831, edited by J. Franklin Jameson (1925). docsouth.unc.edu
- Library of Congress, Omar Ibn Said Collection, with the collection essay. loc.gov
- University of Georgia, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Bilali Muhammad document (ms2807). sclfind.galib.uga.edu
- New Georgia Encyclopedia, “Cornelia Bailey (1945 to 2017).” georgiaencyclopedia.org
- Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (University of Georgia Press, 1940).
- Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Harvard University Press, 2001).
- Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York University Press, 1998; anniversary edition 2013).