CLEMSON, S.C. — South Carolina’s Clemson University is looking at ways to memorialize more than 600 previously unmarked African American graves on a campus cemetery.
The Post and Courier reports that the school’s board of trustees agreed Wednesday to explore creating a memorial garden and accessible pathways within Woodland Cemetery. The board also agreed to notify Clemson faculty and trustees eligible to be buried in the cemetery that burial options may be restricted in the future.
Researchers recently identified the graves likely belonging to the enslaved and convicted African American laborers who built the school at the plantation on which it sits. Many of the remains are interspersed between and overbuilt by the graves of white people.
The newspaper reports that the revelation has prompted Clemson to work with local historians to identify Black gravesites on at least five other properties owned by the school across the state.
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