Granite Countertops in Downtown Charleston, SC

Few places encapsulate stories of our shared cultural landscape like burial grounds. Some are well-established, even destinations for generations of families and visitors. Others, especially those historically serving black communities, remain tucked out of sight or otherwise disconnected from those they once served, but are no less important to Charleston’s cultural history.

The Mapping Charleston’s Black Burial Grounds project was established last year to support the families and communities who have kept a watchful eye on these sacred sites to further document and ensure the long-term preservation of our shared cultural resources.

Here in Charleston, a city celebrated for its architectural preservation, there traditionally have been few requirements to investigate and protect what might be underground when people want to build on their property. So, until very recently, it was relatively easy to claim ignorance about the presence of human burials or even grave markers.

In 2021, a community-driven policy change resulted in a new citywide cemetery protection ordinance that now requires that anyone who finds or is made aware of “known or probable gravesites” during construction “must immediately cease ground disturbing work” and report it to city officials. It was a good start, but with so much development and so few safeguards until now, not many resources exist that document locations of local burial sites, making that prior knowledge difficult.

Enacting the new city rules was the culmination of hard work over the years by community leaders and advocates that sparked renewed interest in strengthening protections for the invaluable cultural resources that burial grounds hold.

The 2013 discovery of the remains of 36 people of African descent during construction of the Gaillard Center is among the most notable recent events to bring public attention to these untold stories. Working with The Gullah Society, alongside the late Ade Ofunniyin — “Dr. O” to many — we rallied the community to learn more about the remains of the people buried for centuries without commemoration under the city’s former municipal auditorium. Soon, a new memorial will be built near the corner of Anson and George streets to pay homage to the men, women and children laid to rest nearby, and the many people of African descent buried under the growing city.

The presence of unmarked burials is not an anomaly here. In the Neck Area of the peninsula, several cemeteries along Monrovia Street sit isolated and overgrown, inaccessible to friends and families of the deceased. On Heriot Street, an estimated 3,000 black Charlestonians were laid to rest between 1860 and 1960 with only a handful of headstones still remaining on a mostly vacant lot.

And within the city limits on the Cainhoy peninsula, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control issued a stop-work order for site work on the new Oak Bluff subdivision in response to evidence of unmarked African American burials. Additional archaeological survey work was conducted, and soon after, the city began listening to advocates and talking in earnest about ramping up local regulations.

All of these sites, and an untold number of others across the area, remain under-documented and vulnerable. But along with stronger local ordinances, increased cultural consciousness and understanding can make sure the Charleston community is able to take the next step and enforce its new ordinance.

This month and in September, there are meetings to hear from communities across the city of Charleston in an effort to identify and document black burial sites to assist city officials with their protection and preservation efforts. Once we assemble a comprehensive map of burial grounds, these sacred sites can be better defended from development pressures.

Building on long-term efforts by families and communities, these sessions are made possible by an African American Civil Rights Grant from the National Park Service to the Preservation Society of Charleston, which is working alongside partners from the Anson Street African Burial Ground Project, with the support of the Charleston mayor’s office and Planning Department and the International African American Museum.

Descendants and residents are invited to attend sessions to learn more about this mapping effort and share comments about burial sites that are meaningful to their families and communities. Strengthening networks for communication and support between residents, preservation organizations and city officials will be one of the best ways to connect communities with resources they need to preserve and maintain local burial grounds for generations to come.

The remaining meetings are at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 29 at Keith School Museum, 1509 Clements Ferry Road, and at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 9 at the Charleston County Main Library, 68 Calhoun St.

Joanna Gilmore and La’Sheia Oubre are members of the Anson Street African Burial Ground Project research team and are working as consultants on the Mapping Charleston’s Black Burial Grounds project.

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — At 4:30 a.m., most people are still asleep, or maybe they're just starting to roll out of bed.

Not Rocky Magwood.

Shrimpers like Captain Magwood and his crew are already a half-mile off the Charleston shoreline by that time, hard at work netting dozens of crustaceans to be used in some of the Lowcountry's most iconic culinary dishes.

AUG. 22, 2023 - Trooper Bob joins Captain Rocky Magwood and his crew to learn about the life of a shrimper in the Lowcountry. (WCIV)

On Tuesday, Captain Magwood set up in a spot his family has been shrimping for more than a century.

It's a trade he was forced to learn at a young age.

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When he was 12, his father passed away, leaving him to balance going to school and maintaining the family shrimping business.

At that time, the Magwoods had two shrimp boats.

Not only do he and his crew work long hours – they also often work in tough weather conditions.

And Tuesday is no exception. The Charleston area is expected to see temperatures reach highs into the upper 90s.

My sole purpose for this trip was to show how hard they work all day for something that takes us three minutes to boil and eat," said Trooper Bob, who joined Magwood and his crew on Tuesday. "I wanted to show what all goes into catching shrimp.

AUG. 22, 2023 - Trooper Bob joins Captain Rocky Magwood and his crew to learn about the life of a shrimper in the Lowcountry. (WCIV)

Trooper Bob will be documenting his experience on his social media pages throughout the day. Make sure to following him on Facebook and Twitter to see more.

After 10 hours on the boat, Trooper Bob said they caught about 400 pounds of shrimp.

Once the shrimp are gathered in the nets, they are brought onto the boat and then every shrimp is picked out by hand. Any other sea life is thrown back into the water.

"I have nothing but the utmost respect for the shrimping community. I know that I will go out of my way to support them and purchase local shrimp. It’s a tough job and thank you for doing what you do, Capt Rocky Magwood!" Trooper Bob said.

Editor's note: This story will also be updated throughout the day.

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AWENDAW, SC (WCIV) — For weeks, Awendaw residents have been expressing concerns about the potential of hundreds of new homes coming to their community.

"Town council has approved 822 new residences with more on the docket tonight," Awendaw resident John Cooke said. "Those residences come with a population that will at least double our current population."

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However, Mayor Miriam Green says the population will not be doubled.

"It's not the truth," Green said. "It's not a total of 800 homes. And if it is, they still have to go through planning."

"I can't say it's 800, 9,00, or 1,000 homes because I don't know," she continued. "But in the preliminary plan, yes, it did say certain amount of homes will be built up there."

Green describes the development plans as "smart growth".

Mayor Miriam Green describes the development plans as "smart growth". (WCIV)

"We are following ordinance and processes of procedures and state guidelines," she said.

In response to the concerns about the development plans being too much in too little time, Green says the town has to follow guidelines and the rules.

"Just because someone comes to you and says 'This is what we want,' doesn't meant that's what the majority of the citizens of Awendaw want," the mayor said.

Residents have also expressed concerns about how new developments may affect Awendaw's roads and infrastructure.

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"Last meeting, I heard emergency services people talk about the fact that they were concerned about their ability to support the town," Cooke said. "The roads, the infrastructure might not be able to support (new development). The roads that were made in the early 1950s-60s are still the ones being used today and could fail."

Green says the infrastructure, road, and traffic issues are being analyzed as part of the development plans.

"We're looking at all that stuff," the mayor said. "We have a traffic study in place, but it doesn't happen overnight."

Another concern is the septic tanks that will be used for the new development, which Green says the town is working on with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC).

Read more: Zoning denial a 'win' for some Awendaw residents

"20 years when all these systems start to fail, you could have an ecological disaster that could affect a lot of bulls bay and the intercoastal waterways," Cooke said.

The evening of Aug. 21, the Awendaw Planning Commission reviewed the Harper Valley proposal. It was denied in a 5-1 vote.

Cooke says people who live in Awendaw are banding together in opposition and they are asking for a moratorium to slow down the development.

"It's a growing pain in Awendaw," Green said. "It's not the people that live here. It's the people that came here."

Priya Rama has been having chronic severe migraines since she was a little girl living in India. Now a mother living in Cincinnati, she’s made them the centerpiece of her art career.

The abstract works that portray what it looks like to Rama when she has a migraine have garnered the attention of galleries around the United States, including one here in Charleston. Mary Martin Gallery, with two locations on Broad and East Bay streets, now represents Rama and is hosting an exhibit of her artwork from 5-8 p.m. on Sept. 1. The reception, with Rama in attendance, will take place at the 143 East Bay St. location.

Translating pain into beauty

Rama’s art and story made it onto “CBS News Sunday Morning” in February 2020. In that video segment, and on a Zoom call with The Post and Courier, Rama explains how her migraines translate to canvas.

Often, a piece will start out with bursts or bubbles at the top, representing light flashes and loss of vision. As the migraine progresses, pain and tightness set in as everything goes dark. Then, she sees vibrant colors pop up in patterns that start their way at the top and work their way down.

“Then I’m able to travel in that space,” she describes to The Post and Courier. “Kind of like I’m bobbing and swimming around, almost. And even though it feels like a goopy texture, I’m able to go through it.”

She paints this progression on the canvas in vivid colors and textures, creating ethereal, meditative works, often hours or days later, after the pain has subsided.

“When I have migraines, I can’t always paint, but I have a photographic memory of visions during them from all these years,” said Rama. “When the meds kick in and I can get out of bed and paint at my home studio, they reappear in my head, like on glass slides that I can (scroll through) and paint.”

Rama has now been creating art inspired by her migraines for around five years. At art fairs and shows, she said those who also deal with migraines often come up to her and express how spot on her pieces are to their own experiences.

“That blows my mind, because these are different bodies, different heads. So how are they seeing the exact same thing?” Rama said.

It’s encounters like these that make her work validating.

“In doing this, I’m able to talk about pain much more openly than I ever had before,” she added.

Rama didn’t always seek to turn her pain into beauty. For most of her life, she just accepted it as a part of daily life. She’s had chronic migraines and considered herself an artist for about the same amount of time, since she was around 8 years old. But only recently did the two collide for her.

A life of art, a life of migraines

The painter, with a master’s degree in visual arts education who has completed doctoral studies in arts administration, has always been a visual learner. That’s how she remembers things, she said.

“I’ve always drawn and painted, and I was self-taught,” said Rama. “In India, I used to look at magazines as inspiration. My father had a subscription to ‘Life’ and ‘National Geographic’... and was a big lover of books and reading. We had no TV growing up, so my view of the world was through these magazines.”

Once she married and moved to the United States, Rama became a graphic designer and began working at an ad agency. Through all of it, she had weekly or even multiple-times-a-week migraines. They ran in her family, so she saw it as just something she had to deal with, often a debilitation that would zap her energy for a day or more at a time.

Even now, after finding a medicine regimen that works for her, she’s bedridden for a half-day or more from an occurrence.

As Rama furthered her art career, moving into the art education sphere, her migraines became worse, likely due to the stress and exhaustion of a two-hour commute each way from Columbus to Cincinnati for classes while teaching, too.

“Being a mom, being a wife, being a teacher, being a student, it was all just too much, and my migraines started to really, really worsen. So when I finished all my coursework, I decided to take the year off before going back to do my dissertation,” said Rama.

It was then that she found clarity. It was then that she began to paint her migraines.

“Just doing that changed how I responded to the migraine and the pain,” she said. “Needless to say, I never went back to finish my dissertation.”

She uses the process of painting migraines as a coping mechanism, said Rama. It’s a way for her to look beyond the pain. Instead of feeling the intensity of the pain, she focuses on the intensity of what she sees: the colors and patterns that she said emerge like a movie. Once she grasps on, she wants to stay in that moment.

It’s also helped her to realize the dualities in life.

“You won’t truly appreciate the beauty without the pain,” she said. “They go together.”

The Charleston connection

Rama is a member of the Women’s Art Club of Cincinnati, which is where she met Mary Martin’s niece, Marie Redfearn Smith. Smith will be joining Rama for the upcoming show at the gallery, titled “States of Being: A Dialogue.”

When her aunt came to visit in Cincinnati, Smith connected her with Rama. After meeting at the artist’s home, Martin said she knew she needed to work with Rama, who is now one of the 140 artists represented by the Charleston gallery.

“I fell in love with who she is,” said Martin. “She is one of the most gentle, kind and wonderful people. She’s very Southern, even though she’s from India.”

Martin, who grew up on a farm in central South Carolina before having a successful real estate career in Colorado Springs, Colorado, moved back to the Palmetto State, specifically to Charleston, 20 years ago to open an art gallery.

She said she’s discovered so many talented artists throughout the years, and Rama is one of them.

“This is so beautiful if it wasn’t so painful, but she’s made such a name for herself,” said Martin.

Martin said Rama’s work is in high demand at both her Charleston gallery locations, including the newest to open on East Bay Street. The gallery was sold out of her work when The Post and Courier visited a few weeks before the upcoming art show.

The front room of the space will be full of fresh pieces for sale and perusal on Sept. 1, and Rama will be there in person for the occasion, migraines allowing.

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