Tracing slavery’s history, from graves to DNA
Black residents of Charleston, S.C., seeking clues to past, present
WCHARLESTON, S.C. hen Edward Lee heard about a project collecting DNA from Black residents like him in Charleston, he had reason to be skeptical.
Knowing Black Americans have been exploited before financially and in medical experiments, he feared handing over his genetic identity could leave him vulnerable.
But he knew the people behind the Anson Street African Burial Ground Project, having worked with many of them before on similar efforts to preserve the region’s Black history.
And they came to him with a unique proposal: With DNA extracted from 36 enslaved people whose bones had been unearthed by a construction crew downtown, researchers were now searching for their living descendants.
Even if he wasn’t related to any of them, Lee figured, maybe a DNA test could still provide other answers that had eluded him. He could trace his ancestry to a great-greatgrandmother on one side but no further. So last spring, he sat still as a researcher gently swabbed the inside of his cheek.
“I had to have guarantees that we control the results — that’s the only reason I did it,” Lee said.
Now, dozens of Black residents have agreed to play their part in the genetic detective work. Their catalyst came in 2013, when workers building a concert hall stumbled upon what is believed to be the oldest known burial ground of enslaved people in Charleston.
The project’s supporters believe it can serve as a blueprint for how to handle the preservation of neglected aspects of Black history across the country, before development and time erode more of it.
That history is particularly poignant in Charleston, where ships once docked with hundreds of kidnapped Africans onboard, and where community leaders like Lee have spent years fighting to protect the graveyards of enslaved people.
“It feels like every piece of ground you step on — it is seeped with that history,” said
Joanna Gilmore, an anthropologist and a member of the project who has devoted much of her career to chronicling African burial grounds.
Researchers began taking DNA samples from current residents, holding events in familiar community spaces and promising confidentiality.
Because the community had been involved in the yearslong process of reinterring and honoring the 36 ancestors, there was already a sense of trust with the research team. Black residents said those ties were essential to their confidence in the project.
The analysis of their DNA was conducted by Theodore Schurr, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
In the decade since the burial ground was discovered, Gilmore and other researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, the College of Charleston and the Charleston community have shed light on the African and Indigenous ancestry of the 36 people buried along Anson Street in the late 18th century — several men, and most likely a mother and a child among them.
Six were most likely born in Africa, and others were born in Charleston or nearby. While the graves had no markings, the bodies were carefully spaced, buried with shrouds or with coins meant to cover their eyes.
The “Ancestors” — as they are collectively known — have since been reinterred, and there are plans to construct a fountain ringed with bronze hands, all modeled from Black residents of similar ages to the 36 people found.
But another question remained: Were there any living descendants still in Charleston?
That quest, however, required persuading as many people as possible from the region to participate.
Some agreed because they saw it as a way to safely answer fundamental questions about their family history or to trace their roots beyond the Carolina shores.
So far, no direct descendants have been found, something researchers acknowledge may never happen. But the project has shown each individual result has the possibility to transform people’s understanding of their heritage.