Traveling brings us many joys, from trying new foods to seeing new sites, meeting new people, and discovering hidden gems. However, perhaps the most significant impact of travel is the valuable lessons it teaches us about our past and our future, collectively.
Whether embarking on big bucket list adventures or simple local trips, we’re here to celebrate travel in all its forms. Furthermore, we’re honoring this return to magnificent experiences with new episodes of our podcast, Let’s Go Together, which highlights how travel changes our perspectives on ourselves and the world around us.
Diverse Stories from Season One
In the first season, our pilot and adventurer host, Kellee Edwards, introduced listeners to a variety of globe-trotters, demonstrating that travelers come in many forms and from diverse backgrounds. From the first Black woman to travel to every country to a man who trekked to Machu Picchu in a wheelchair, we encountered some truly inspiring individuals. Now, in our second season, we are excited to introduce new people, places, and perspectives.
A Conversation with Ahmad Ward
In this episode of Let’s Go Together, Edwards sits down with Ahmad Ward, the executive director of Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park, a site representing the first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States.
“There’s so much history, and it’s a place where black people owned property for a very long time,” Ward explains regarding Hilton Head. “From the Reconstruction era through the ’30s and ’40s, Mitchelville epitomizes the concept of freedom in America. It is a linchpin site because these individuals were charting their own course.”
Admiringly, Ward notes that Mitchelville was established in 1862 at a time when free black communities were almost nonexistent. Following the Civil War, General Ormsby Mitchel helped the newly freed community forge a path toward a brighter future.
“He gifted them approximately six or seven hundred acres of property from the old Drayton Plantation, saying, ‘This is your land. This is your soil. You build on it, grow, raise families, start schools, launch businesses, and create churches. This opportunity allows you to be citizens of something,'” Ward shares. “That’s why our tagline is, ‘Where freedom began.’ This was the inaugural chance for Africans in America to feel like citizens, especially within a community they constructed themselves.”
Want to delve deeper into the captivating history of Mitchelville Freedom Park and learn how to plan a visit? Listen as Ward unfolds the story on Let’s Go Together, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Player.FM, and everywhere podcasts can be found.