Charleston hemp farmer and certified public accountant Harold Singletary works in a tiny office just a short walk along East Bay Street to the Old Exchange Building, the location of a historic sale of enslaved people that likely led to his birth.
Singletary takes lunch-time strolls along the sidewalk toward the Old Exchange with a sense of belonging and motivation, knowing his ancestors also walked the streets of Charleston.
He learned of the connection to them through Edward Ball’s 1998 best-selling book, Slaves in the Family. Ball’s research showed that the parents of Singletary’s great-great-grandmother, Katie Heyward, had been enslaved by the Ball family.
Singletary’s family affectionately called her Bright Ma, the name he gave to his Cordesville-based hemp farm.
In 2023, a second revelation overwhelmed Singletary after Lauren Davila, then a College of Charleston graduate student, uncovered ads for the 1835 sale of 600 people that the Balls enslaved.
It was the largest single sale of enslaved people in U.S. history. A historic marker at the site of the sale ironically stands on a tree-lined, cobblestone street between Singletary’s office and the Old Exchange.
Katie Heyward’s grandparents and mother were not separated during that auction, which kept them in the Ball family ownership, making it possible for Singletary and Bright Ma’s other descendants to be born, according to Slaves in the Family.
The 600 people who were sold in February 1835 had been owned by John Ball, Jr., a member of the Ball family that enslaved nearly 4,000 people in Berkeley County. When he died a year earlier, his plantations and enslaved workforce were put on the auction block along with other people owned by Ball’s relatives.
When the two-day sale ended, 770 people — just from the Ball family — had been sold away, a process that ripped Black families apart forever. However, Ball’s widow, Ann Ball, bought back 215 people her husband had enslaved, along with two plantations, Comingtee and Midway, which covered more than 3,000 acres.
Adonis, Tenah and their daughter Binah were among the people Ann Ball purchased in 1835. She paid $1,525 for them and two other people.
“Ann Ball managed the plantation for several years. Adonis finally died; then Ann Ball herself died in June 1840,” according to Ball’s book. “That year, Tenah’s daughter Binah gave birth to the child named Katie, who would come to be known as Bright Ma.” Bright Ma was enslaved at Comingtee.
Singletary said, “Now that this history is recognized, it can be used to change the narrative” of the contributions of enslaved people.
Built on family land
The six-foot, seven-inch Singletary played basketball at Livingstone College in Salisbury, N.C., where he earned a degree in accounting. He grew up on his grandparent’s James Island farm. Ned Roper and Katie Lee Simmons Roper were one of the Lowcountry’s largest Black farmers, who provided produce for the Piggly Wiggly food stories, he said.
Singletary launched Bright Ma Farms in 2018 on 10 acres in Cordesville he inherited from Bright Ma’s granddaughter, Katie Lee Simmons Roper. The land was among the property the Ball family gave to some of the people they had enslaved, he said.
“A lot of people sold their property, but Bright Ma’s granddaughter, who is also named Katie, left it to me as the accountant in the family to create generational wealth,” he said.
“Coming from a farming family and feeling comfortable in a digital world,” Singletary continued, “I was able to raise the capital to launch an innovative ag-tech company that creates climate-smart materials that range from bio-fuel, bio-fiber, bio-plastic resins used to make car body parts, clothing, pallets, food trays and paper.”
Some of Bright Ma Farms’s collaborators and partners are recognizable corporate and government agencies, such as NASA, the S.C. Research Authority, Ford and Amazon, he said.
When Singletary walks into their offices, he’s unapologetic about his family’s links to slavery. “I always tell our story,” he said. “I am not coming in asking for something that my ancestors haven’t already paid for.”
In October, Amazon spotlighted Bright Ma Farms during the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) annual conference in Atlanta.
Katie Heyward lived in Cordesville on the 10-acre tract that was passed down to Singletary. Singletary lived and grew up on his grandparent’s James Island farm before he joined the U.S. Army. His grandmother described Bright Ma “as a super woman I would never see,” he said. “I asked her why she was called Bright Ma?” His grandmother told him that although Heyward had been enslaved, the experience didn’t dim her outlook, and she taught her family to never give up and always believe.
“That’s where my mantra came from,” Singletary explained. “Bright Ma had dreams, but she was not able to test drive them. I have no excuses. I can walk around the corner to where they sold human beings, and I can change that narrative by what I do.”
Davila met Singletary for the first time in October, when both attended the unveiling of a plaque marking the site of the auctioneers who handled the 1835 sale at the Old Exchange. She was shocked to learn the juxtaposition of Singletary’s business office to the location at 24 Broad St.
“I could not find the words to describe my amazement,” she said. The proximity, she continued, “speaks to how you never know what history you are walking past in Charleston.”
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