This group of houses, more like shacks, sits in a rural part of South Carolina about twenty miles south of Charlotte, North Carolina. They are part of Camp Welfare, an African-American religious campground founded after the American Civil War by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The approximately 100 small wood-frame or cinder-block houses at Camp Welfare are referred to as “tents”. They were typically owned by families and passed down to generations. They were simple shelters because the people that occupied them did most everything outside including cooking and eating. Traveling preachers would give sermons in the open air pavilions or under the shade of a tree. The property was listed in the National Register of historic places in 1984.
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