African American cemeteries preserve ancestry, Black history, family stories and community memory. Dominique Holiday explores why protecting them matters.

The early morning air hung cool and quiet over the sunny grounds of Penn Center, a place where time feels layered rather than distant. It was here, on this same campus, that Martin Luther King Jr. once sought refuge from the pressures of the movement—retreating to the Sea Islands to think, write, and organize at the height of the Civil Rights era.

A headline framed South Carolina State’s program cuts as decline. The fuller story is different. Low-enrollment programs are being phased out while the university expands into cybersecurity, computer engineering, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. SC State is not shrinking from its future. It is reallocating resources, strengthening academics and building toward where student demand and opportunity are growing.

Never would I have imagined that when I came across the name John P. Perry, I was looking at a name already living in my own bloodline. The name of my great grandmother, the same woman I remembered wearing those beautiful dresses to church, was tied to that very line. The tree wasn't the only thing whose roots were planted in Lincolnville. So were mine, through my great great great grandfather. As my family shared stories and we connected the pieces, it all began to make sen

Gullah Geechee Drum Major Jim Capers risked his life in the American Revolution, survived devastating wounds at Eutaw Springs, and witnessed the surrender at Yorktown. Yet decades passed before the nation recognized the sacrifice of a Black soldier who helped shape its independence.

Reparations need not be reduced to a check. The Charleston proposal reframes justice through land, 7000 acres tied to culture, stewardship, and generational power. For Gullah Geechee descendants, land is memory, survival, and a foundation for institutions that shape the future.