Hey, it's Kelly McEvers, co-host of Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

It's Black History Month, and in honor of this celebration, we are bringing you stories from our map of wondrous places where black people have impacted the world for the better.

On this episode, producers Jerome Campbell and Manolo Morales both tell stories about black people

who have used nature to change their environment. The first one begins in 1975 in the small

town of Bishopville, South Carolina, about two and a half miles north of Charleston.

Here's Jerome.

The prospect of owning a piece of land meant something to Pearl Friar.

He had grown up in nearby North Carolina, the child of a sharecropper.

Returning to the land he knew meant something.

So when his job offered him a chance to move to South Carolina, he took it.

And for five years, he and his wife saved up to buy a house.

The problem was racism.

When Fryer went to buy his home in 1980, he was told that white residents wouldn't welcome him. They were concerned that he wouldn't upkeep his

property. So Fryer made a space for his family outside the city limits, among a community

of black families.

Friar and his wife built their home from the ground up, and they built it their way.

It was a brick ranch-style home.

Friar even made little artistic touches, like abstract tile mosaics lining the circular driveway.

But Friar's plans for the land were even grander.

Back down the interstate, the Bishopville Garden Club had a yard of the month competition,

and Friar had every intention of winning it.

The problem.

...