“P” is for Promised Land

“P” is for Promised Land (Greenwood and Abbeville counties; 2020 population 555). Located just off of S.C. Highway 10 south of Greenwood, this rural African American community was created by freed slaves in the early 1870s. The South Carolina Land Commission had acquired a 2,742-acre tract and in 1869 began selling fifty-acre lots to freed African Americans. By 1872 some forty-eight families resided in the community. The name derived from their “promise” to pay the commission for the land. Residents of Promised Land exerted a significant influence over the political, economic, and social life of rural Abbeville and Greenwood Counties. World War I, the boll weevil, and the Depression stimulated migration from Promised Land.  Many residents remained, however, and descendants of the original purchasers of Promised Land acreage occupied the land continually into the twenty-first century.