The public is right to be concerned about the College of Charleston's plans to build a large dormitory off Coming Street, atop a two-century-old burial ground, and the college has been right in addressing these concerns as its plans take shape. The public should work with the college to ensure that each side gets most of what it wants in the end.
As The Post and Courier's Valerie Nava reported, more than 100 people turned out earlier this month to voice opposition to a planned building on the site where Charleston's YWCA had stood for years. Long before that, this large 3.4-acre block of the peninsula, north of Calhoun Street and east of Coming, served as a public city cemetery where enslaved people, poor white people, orphans and seamen and other transient visitors were buried.
An even earlier public burial ground was located just to the south -- near where Robert Mills Manor public housing sits today. When that filled up and as the city's population grew, a new public burial ground was created in 1794 in the block now framed by Coming, Vanderhorst, St. Philips and Calhoun streets. It filled quickly, too, and was closed in 1807, just before the legal importation of enslaved Africans was stopped forever. More than 4,000 people are believed to have been buried there, but few if any records were kept -- and it's believed some were buried without city approval.
Public burials were later moved to where the Medical University of South Carolina campus stands today, and many forgot about this potter's field. That changed recently, as the College of Charleston acquired the Greater YWCA of Charleston site with plans to build a 600- to 1,000-bed dormitory.
It's a sensible location in that it's only about a block north from the heart of its campus. But it's a challenging location because no one can be certain what might be found during initial foundation work. One only has to look a few blocks to the east, where construction crews remaking Charleston's Gaillard Center were surprised to encounter three dozen sets of human remains buried in the mid-18th century near today's Anson Street. The Coming Street site is known to harbor many more.
President Andrew Hsu tells us the college understands this history and is committed to working with the community to respect it. "We're not the first one to build upon this property or even the second or third, but what we can do -- and what we're committed to do -- is to be the best steward of that property and treat everything that is there with the utmost respect that it deserves."
Of course, the details of what that stewardship looks like cannot take shape until the YWCA building and its paved parking area are removed and archaeologists can use ground-penetrating radar to see how much evidence of human remains exists, likely this fall. College officials have held two community meetings and plan to hold a third on Sept. 22. Dr. Hsu says it also is looking into creating a citizens advisory group, which is a good idea that will increase the transparency regarding what is found and next steps.
It's a positive development that Charleston's residents have a heightened sensitivity to this part of our city's history. That wasn't always the case, as evidenced by what has been built in and around this cemetery site during the 19th and 20th centuries; that list includes not only the YWCA of Greater Charleston but also homes, a parking garage and a telephone exchange.
While this cemetery's existence should not prevent further use on the site, it's important that work be done more sensitively than in the past. It's time to raise the bar, and two recent precedents come to mind. The most ambitious by far is what unfolded in New York when the federal government learned in 1991 that its planned office building was on top of an historic black burial ground, a discovery that led to the creation of the African Burial Ground National Monument several years later.
And Charleston's discovery at the Gaillard led the city to partner with a nonprofit that did a deep dive into the people interred there, a partnership that in turn led to a memorial fountain honoring the remains and legacies of these enslaved people, six of whom were born in Africa.
The college is planning to memorialize this potter's field in its new project, and it should remain nimble as to how the archaeological findings shape that and even the new building's footprint. And while it hopes to finish construction by 2029, it should be willing to push back that date if needed. In other words, college officials must be flexible out of respect not only for the dead but also for those living who are concerned about them.
As local historian Nic Butler noted, improvements in health care, expanding economic prosperity over the past century and the mass migration from urban to suburban neighborhoods after World War II meant the memory of burial grounds set aside for the less fortunate faded from the public consciousness. On at least four occasions, construction has displaced some of these graves. We agree with Mr. Butler's conclusion: "The forgotten dead of Charleston's public cemeteries no longer have a voice, but they all deserve to be acknowledged."
As with so much in Charleston, heightened understanding and respect of the past promises to create a better future for all of us.
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