Contribute towards the Memorial

The Anson Street African Burial Memorial welcomes your support! We are seeking contributions for the construction and maintenance of the Memorial to preserve it for future generations. You can make tax-deductible donations to a fund at the Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina. The memorial will be owned and maintained by the City of Charleston. The Charleston Gaillard Center's Education & Community Program is curating lessons and workshops to engage students and the community with the memorial to honor our Ancestors. Thank you for helping us celebrate this important legacy!

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A Memorial for the Ancestors

Building Momentum

Over the past eight years plans to build a permanent memorial for the Ancestors, who were uncovered near the Gaillard Center in 2013, have gained momentum. Here is the story of that process.

Engaging Community

In 2017, when Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg invited the Gullah Society to lead the reinterment and memorialization of the Anson Street Ancestors, we began hosting regular Community Conversations and visiting local schools. During these gatherings, we asked community members of all ages what they wanted to learn about the Ancestors, how they wished to honor them, and how they hoped to feel when visiting a future memorial.

We asked this final question because we knew that reaching consensus on a specific design might be challenging. Rather than focusing solely on form, we believed it would be more meaningful to understand the emotions the memorial should evoke. This approach ensured deep community input while offering valuable guidance to the artists who would bring the vision to life.

Student Involvement

In the fall of 2018, we partnered with Dr. Nathaniel Walker, Professor of Art and Architectural History at the College of Charleston, to involve college students in imagining possible memorial designs. Dr. Walker taught a course titled Landscapes of Memory, in which students studied monuments and memorials from around the world—with a special focus on African design traditions and the ongoing debates surrounding monuments in the U.S. South.

As part of the course, students developed design proposals for a memorial honoring the Anson Street Ancestors. They presented their ideas at Rise Up: Summoning the Power and Presence of African Ancestors in Charleston, a public event we hosted at the College of Charleston on November 7, 2018. After receiving thoughtful feedback from community members at the event, the students revised their designs. These updated proposals were later exhibited at the College’s Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston and at the City of Charleston's Cannon Street Arts Center in 2019.

Monumental Decisions

In February 2019, we continued community conversations about a permanent memorial by hosting Egungun Tunji: Ancestors Rise Again! at the Cannon Street Arts Center. At this gathering, we shared updates from the DNA research with community members and welcomed Rodney Leon, the renowned architect of the New York African Burial Ground Memorial. Mr. Leon spoke about his work on that site as well as The Ark of the Return—a powerful monument created for the United Nations in New York to honor the millions of African people who endured the transatlantic slave trade and the brutal realities of enslavement in the Americas.

Later that spring, on May 4, 2019, the Anson Street Ancestors were reinterred with care and ceremony. During the reinterment, Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg publicly committed to building a permanent memorial in their honor. At that time, a small bronze plaque was installed beside the burial vault on George Street where the Ancestors now rest.

Perseverance

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted plans. In October 2020, Gullah Society founding director Dr. Ade Ofunniyin passed away. The Gullah Society, Inc. (501c3) was dissolved in 2021.

Renewed Interest

In August 2021, Mayor John Tecklenburg convened a group of twenty-four individuals—including civic leaders and representatives from key cultural and community organizations—to discuss the future of the memorial project. Participants included members from the City of Charleston, the College of Charleston, the International African American Museum, the Anson Street African Burial Ground Project, the Gullah Geechee Heritage Corridor Commission, Spoleto Festival USA, the Gibbes Museum of Art, the Charleston Gaillard Center, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the Preservation Society of Charleston, and St. John’s Reformed Episcopal Church.

In parallel, community leader Maxine Smith brought together an additional group of concerned citizens to ensure broad and inclusive input. Brenda Lauderback, chair of the board for Denny’s Corporation, agreed to lead a fundraising initiative to support the project. She was joined by Nigel Redden, former General Director of Spoleto Festival USA, who had recently retired and volunteered to help staff the effort.

Together, they began laying the groundwork for what would become a broad network of support. Wells Fargo stepped forward as the founding partner, offering essential leadership funding for the memorial. The City of Charleston committed to owning and maintaining the fountain and surrounding garden. Additional early contributors included Denny’s Corporation, the Spaulding Paolozzi Foundation, the Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, and the Wolverine Worldwide Foundation—each helping to bring the vision into being.

Stephen L. Hayes Jr. Memorial Design

Renowned sculptor Stephen Hayes Jr. was commissioned to design the memorial, and his vision was met with unanimous enthusiasm. His concept is rooted in reverence—for the Ancestors, the land, and the living community that remembers them.

At its center is a fountain, its basin shaped from the very soil where the thirty-six Ancestors were reinterred, blended with sacred earth gathered from 36 African descendant burial sites across the Charleston region. This earth-formed vessel becomes both altar and offering.

From the basin’s edge, thirty-six pairs of bronze hands will emerge—cast from living individuals whose age, gender, and ancestry reflect those of the Ancestors. These hands, raised in gestures of prayer, protection, and presence, create a powerful link between past and present.

Behind each pair, a single stream of water will rise and fall—a quiet rhythm drawn from Gullah Geechee traditions. In African and African American belief systems, water is sacred: it brought us, it connects us, and it carries the memory of those who came before.

This memorial will not only mark a place of rest—it will speak in the language of spirit, remembrance, and return.

Honoring Ancestors Through Living Hands

At the heart of the memorial are 36 African American community members from Charleston, whose hands serve as living vessels of remembrance. Each was thoughtfully chosen to reflect the ages, genders, and identities of the thirty-six Ancestors—infants, children, teens, women, and men—creating a powerful bridge between past and present.

Guided by La’Sheia Oubré and Joanna Gilmore, and in close collaboration with artist Stephen Hayes, these community members offered their hands to be molded in alginate, a natural material that captured every line and gesture. The molds were then cast in bronze, forming enduring emblems of dignity, resilience, and ancestral memory.

This memorial does not speak about the Ancestors—it speaks with them. Through the hands of their living descendants, it calls us to witness, to honor, and to remember the countless Africans and African-descended people buried in Charleston’s soil, often unmarked and unacknowledged. Their presence endures—held in bronze, and held in community.

Soil as Witness: A Gathering of Sacred Ground

The journey to honor African and African descendant Ancestors buried in and around Charleston has been shaped by the care, commitment, and leadership of community members. In 2024, that journey continued with a powerful act of remembrance: the collection of sacred soil from burial grounds across the region.

Community members—individuals, families, and church leaders—led the way. With La’Sheia Oubré and Joanna Gilmore as collaborators, they gathered soil from 36 burial sites, each chosen for its deep significance to the living community. These places include long-erased urban cemeteries, plantation graveyards on private lands, and burial sites connected to church congregations and societies disrupted by gentrification. Each site holds stories. Each handful of earth carries memory.

Six Years of Remembrance: Reinterment Anniversary & Soil Pouring Ceremony

On May 4, 2025, the Charleston community gathered in a sacred ceremony to mark six years since the reinterment of the Anson Street Ancestors. Led by community members and supported by the ASABG team, the event centered on pouring sacred soil—lovingly gathered from 36 African descendant burial sites in and around Charleston.

The ceremony opened with libations led by Clifton Polite (Shango), invoking the Ancestors and rooting the gathering in Yoruba traditions. Prayers by Rev. Toby Smith grounded the ceremony in reverence and spirit. Through song and poetry, Audrey Grant and Debra Holt summoned the presence and power of the Ancestors.

In a moment of shared reverence, community members poured the soil into an urn for use in the memorial’s fountain basin—a symbolic act affirming that the lives of enslaved and free Africans are not forgotten.

After the Ancestors’ names were called, the ceremony closed with a powerful prayer by Brother DeAndré Muhammad of the Nation of Islam. His words brought the gathering to a moving and resolute end: a reminder that the Ancestors are near. Their spirits rise in every prayer, every song, every hand extended in remembrance.

Latest Update

On January 28, 2025, the City of Charleston granted the permit to begin construction for the memorial fountain and garden. The hands have now been cast in bronze and the basin has been fabricated. We are eagerly anticipating the groundbreaking and subsequent construction over the coming months.