Rediscovery of African American burial grounds provides long-overdue opportunities for collective healing

By: Joanna Gilmore, College of Charleston, The Conversation

Outlets: The Conversation

Published: October 29, 2025

Words: 1,434

Last Updated: 3 weeks, 6 days ago

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By Joanna Gilmore, College of Charleston

In the course of construction work in 2013, the remains of 36 individuals of African descent were uncovered in the heart of downtown Charleston, South Carolina. They had lain hidden for some 200 years in an unmarked 18th-century burial ground.

For more than two centuries, such burial grounds, especially those in the former American slave states, have often been erased or obscured – paved over by parking lots, built …

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