Carlisle, South Carolina
From the indigenous peoples who first called this land home, through generations of Black families who farmed it and built a community here, to the people fighting for its future today — this is the full story of Carlisle.
"To understand what Carlisle is fighting for, you must first understand what Carlisle has always been — a place of deep roots, quiet resilience, and a people who have never stopped belonging to this land."
Before the town · Pre-colonial era
Long before Carlisle had a name, this land was home to indigenous communities who lived in deep relationship with the forests, waterways, and soil of the Carolina Piedmont.
The land that would become Carlisle, South Carolina sits in the Carolina Piedmont — a region that was home to indigenous peoples for thousands of years before European colonization. The Catawba Nation, whose territory encompassed much of this region, maintained sophisticated agricultural practices, trade networks, and a deep stewardship of the land and its waterways.
The Broad River, which flows through this region and would later become the center of Carlisle's contamination crisis, was a vital resource for indigenous communities — a source of water, food, and spiritual significance long before Cone Mills discharged a single drop of chemical waste into it.
The forced displacement of indigenous peoples from this region through colonial expansion and later the Indian Removal Act of 1830 did not erase their presence from this land. Many families of indigenous descent remained in the Carolina Piedmont, interweaving with the African American community that would come to call Carlisle home. The roots of Carlisle's community are indigenous, African, and deeply intertwined.
CRDI honors this history as the foundation of everything that follows — and recognizes that the fight for clean water and healthy land in Carlisle is part of a much longer story of a people who have always belonged here.
Community founding · 1800s
Carlisle, South Carolina grew as a small rural community in Union County, shaped by the plantation economy and the enslaved and free Black families who would become its backbone.
Carlisle developed as a small community in Union County, South Carolina during the 19th century. Like much of the Carolina Piedmont, its early economy was built on agriculture — and like much of the antebellum South, that agriculture was built on the labor of enslaved African Americans who worked the surrounding plantations.
The families who would become the core of Carlisle's Black community were the descendants of those enslaved people — men and women who, after emancipation, stayed on this land not because they had nowhere else to go, but because this land was theirs in every way that mattered. They had cleared it, farmed it, and built upon it with their own hands.
In the Reconstruction era and beyond, Black families in and around Carlisle worked to acquire land, establish churches, and build the foundations of a community. That community — overwhelmingly Black, deeply rooted, and largely invisible to the political structures around it — would persist through the decades that followed, including through the industrialization that would eventually bring both economic hope and devastating harm.
The farming era · Late 1800s – mid 1900s
For generations, the Black families of Carlisle farmed this land with skill, determination, and an intimate knowledge of the soil and seasons that no textbook could teach.
The Black farming community of Carlisle represents one of the South's countless untold stories — families who turned the labor of survival into an act of sovereignty. Through sharecropping's injustices and onto land ownership where they could achieve it, these families worked the red clay soil of Union County through droughts, floods, and economic depressions that would have broken communities with less resolve.
Farming in Carlisle was not simply an economic activity — it was a cultural practice, a form of community care, and an assertion of belonging. Neighbors shared labor at harvest time. Crops were exchanged between families. The land fed not just individual households but the social fabric of the whole community.
Women were central to this agricultural tradition — not only in the fields but as the keepers of seed knowledge, food preservation, herbal medicine, and the intergenerational wisdom that sustained families across hard seasons. Their contributions, so often unrecorded in official history, are the living inheritance that CRDI's regenerative farming initiative seeks to honor and revive.
This era of Black farming in Carlisle laid the groundwork for everything CRDI is building today — a community that already knows how to feed itself, and is reclaiming the right to do so again.
The Jeter legacy · A community story
Among the families who shaped Carlisle's community, the Jeter family stands as a symbol of the deep-rooted resilience and agricultural tradition that defines this place.
The Black Jeter family is part of the multi-generational fabric of Carlisle — descendants of both the surrounding plantation communities and the indigenous peoples who were here before them. Their roots in this land run deeper than any deed recorded in a courthouse.
Leola Jeter was among the prominent figures of her community — a woman who farmed this land with the knowledge and skill passed down through generations. Her work fed her family and her neighbors, and her presence anchored a community that the wider world rarely bothered to notice.
The Jeter family's story is not unusual in Carlisle — it is representative of dozens of Black families whose histories are rarely documented but deeply felt. Families who watched the Carlisle Finishing Plant arrive in 1955, who drank from the Broad River, and who have lived with the consequences of contamination without ever being told the truth about what was in their water.
CRDI's work is inspired by these families — and dedicated to ensuring that their legacy is not contamination and decline, but revival and justice.
Community legacy
The Black Jeter family represents a community of multi-generational Carlisle families whose indigenous, African, and agricultural heritage is the true foundation of this town.
"These roads have carried generations of Carlisle families. We intend to make sure they carry many more."
The contamination era · 1955 – present
In 1955, the Carlisle Finishing Plant began operations — and with it, decades of toxic contamination of the Broad River that Carlisle's community depended on for their water.
The arrival of the Carlisle Finishing Plant, operated by Cone Mills, brought the promise of industrial employment to a rural community that had long been economically marginalized. For a Black community with few economic options in the segregated South, the plant represented both opportunity and dependence.
What the community did not know — and was never told — was that the plant's operations were contaminating the Broad River with PFAS chemicals (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) at levels that would eventually be measured at 7,200 times the federal safety standard. These "forever chemicals" do not break down. They accumulate in water, in soil, and in human bodies.
PFAS contamination is linked to cancer, thyroid disease, immune system disruption, high cholesterol, and developmental harm in children. In a community already underserved by healthcare and economic infrastructure, the health consequences of decades of exposure may never be fully known.
What is known is this: zero independent water tests have ever been conducted in Carlisle. The community has never been given answers. CRDI intends to change that — through independent testing, legal coalition-building, and a commitment to accountability that will not be deterred.
Cone Mills begins operations. PFAS chemical discharge into the Broad River begins.
Scientists begin identifying PFAS as potentially harmful. Industry awareness grows while communities remain uninformed.
Federal guidelines acknowledge PFAS danger. Carlisle still receives no testing or notification.
Federal maximum contaminant levels established. Carlisle's river is measured at 7,200× the safe limit.
Independent testing, legal coalition, and the regenerative farming initiative — the fight for Carlisle begins in earnest.
Carlisle today · The fight for the future
Today, Carlisle is a community in transition — smaller than it once was, but no less resilient. CRDI is here to ensure its future is written by the people who belong to it.
Carlisle today is a small, majority-Black community in Union County, SC — one of the most underserved communities in the state. Like many rural Black communities in the South, it has experienced decades of economic decline, population loss, and political invisibility. Young people have left. Elders have stayed. The community is smaller than it was — but its roots are no less deep.
CRDI was founded to change that trajectory. Not by importing solutions from outside, but by building on what Carlisle already has — ancestral land, agricultural knowledge, community bonds, and a history that, once told, commands attention and respect.
Our work is two-track: pursue accountability for the contamination that was done to this community, and build a regenerative economic future that doesn't depend on anyone else's permission. Clean water. Healthy soil. Economic sovereignty. These are not luxuries — they are the inheritance that Carlisle's families were always owed.
If you are a descendant of Carlisle, a supporter of environmental justice, or someone who believes that every community — regardless of race or resources — deserves clean water and a dignified future, we invite you to be part of what comes next.
The history of this community deserves more than documentation. It deserves action. Join us in fighting for what Carlisle has always been owed.