Mansfield Memorial

Design Project • October 2025

Mansfield Memorial is a site dedicated to the forced slave labor utilized in the American South prior to the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. Located in Georgetown, South Carolina, the Mansfield plantation operated as a rice plantation for many years and became one of the highest producing rice plantations in America. This boom was a direct result of the large amount of slave labor that was employed as well as technological efficiencies - such as the winnowing barn, a tower-like structure in which slaves would deposit raw husked rice down a hole in the tower. As the rice would fall, its husks would be carried away by the wind, and a mound of the resulting rice grains would lie at the base of the winnowing barn. Furthermore, its direct adjacency to the Black River allowed for Mansfield’s rice fields to be manually flooded during growth periods, adding to this efficiency in rice production.

Today, Mansfield is known as one of the better preserved plantations in America. It, along with other plantations in America, has become so manicured and sanitized to the point that the broad public has deliberately severed their historical knowledge of plantations with their appearance. This line of thinking is one of many egregious displays of the Lost Cause myth in action. To the public who refuses to engage critically with plantations, these machines of forced labor have become aesthetic and boutique-like, embodying a certain Southern charm. Many of these plantations have become wedding venues and engagement photoshoot backdrops. The rough, marred edge of these plantations has been sanded off, and replaced with a veneer of historic romanticism. The preservation of plantations like Mansfield is excused with the rationale of preserving architectural history, while almost entirely negating the true image of the people who erected each of those buildings.

In spite of this Lost Cause thinking, the Mansfield Memorial combats this preservation of corrupted Southern values, and rather, speaks to the experience of the slave at Mansfield. Without assuming the role or position of the laborer, this memorial engages the user as a solemn spectator to the atrocities that were committed at Mansfield. To this end, the user experiences two critical aspects of the design immediately. The first, the user is plunged below grade through a narrow and straight trench that leads to the Big House. The user is maintained just out of view of the ground plane. This connotes the flooding of the rice fields, a task slaves conducted routinely and became central to daily life on the plantation. The confinement of this dark channel, as well as the looming Big House’s foundation impresses restraint and oppression at the hand of another. Finally, the user observes this unrelenting forced labor as they behold the winnowing husks that are suspended in the thousands above their heads. These dark canisters, tethered to the ancient Southern Live Oak trees, contain ash. As wind breathes through Mansfield, ash is released passively, creating a cloud in unity. Symbolic of one of the most grueling tasks at Mansfield, these winnowing husks indicate a labor that will never end, frighteningly enormous in scope.