[African Americans working, Charleston, S.C.: At the pump - 3 African Americans at water pump]

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A street scene at a water pump in Charleston, South Carolina, shows three African American workers, a subject the caption card links to the city's street trade, docks, and its cotton and rice economy. The stereo card was copyrighted by Kilburn Brothers, a New Hampshire firm known for mass-producing stereoviews that home viewers saw in three dimensions through a stereoscope. Its date, around 1879, falls in the years after Reconstruction, when Black laborers in Southern port cities did much of the physical work that kept goods moving. The record's details are unverified and drawn from an old caption, so the specific workers and their tasks remain uncertain.

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