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Former Charlotte Museum Historian To Help Portray Charleston's Slave Trade History

Sarah Delia / WFAE

A former staff historian at Charlotte’s Levine Museum of the New South is joining the staff of a planned museum in Charleston that will highlight the South Carolina city’s historic role in the international slave trade.   

Brenda Tindal has been named director of education and engagement for the International African American Museum, scheduled to open in 2020 at the historic site of Charleston’s Gadsden’s Wharf.  An estimated 100,000 West Africans were brought there in the slave trade over a 25-year period beginning in 1783. 

Tindal is a Charlotte native who left the Levine Museum of the New South last December, following a two-year tenure. She helped create the Levine’s K(no)w Justice, K(no)w Peace exhibit in the wake of community unrest after the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. Tindal has most recently been director of education at the Detroit Historical Society.

Tindal was introduced in her new role with the African American museum at a press conference on Friday in Charleston.

"History has this way of sobering people so that they're not caught in this sort of passionate fit in the moment, but really thinking about it with a longitudinal lens."  Tindal said at the announcement. 

The Post and Courier of Charleston reported that Tindal also said she plans to create an “online clearinghouse” for teachers, where they can swap lesson plans on U.S. history, and find material to help them talk with students before and after visiting the planned museum.

Construction on the Charleston faclity is expected to begin by early next year. Tindal’s replacement in the Charlotte job, Dr. Willie Griffin, joined the Levine Museum of the New South as staff historian in June.

Mark Rumsey grew up in Kansas and got his first radio job at age 17 in the town of Abilene, where he announced easy-listening music played from vinyl record albums.