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Dictionaries define gardens as pieces of ground used to grow crops and vegetables. Spirituality might define gardens as any space that invites moments of reflection, reckoning and real change. By the later definition, the International African American Museum ’s Ancestors Garden may be the only garden in the Holy City that, unflinchingly, calls the whole city to reckon with its past.
On Feb. 28, IAAM Architect Walter Hood and IAAM CEO Dr. Tonya Matthews engaged in an intellectual dialogue about the museum’s construction and its architectural significance.
Matthews shared that when the two first met many years go, Hood gifted her with a copy of " Denmark Vesey’s Garden ," a fascinating book that outlines competing memories of slavery in Charleston, where almost half the nation’s enslaved population entered into America. Charleston, filled with individual “gardens,” might be thought of holistically as a single garden. Since the abolition of slavery, White people have gardened out a space that has sought to eliminate the contributions of Black people from public memory and minimize the atrocities of slavery.
Meanwhile, luxurious properties cultivated and built by enslaved hands such as Middleton Place, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, Drayton Hall and others, were preserved to highlight their beautiful natural amenities: moss-draped oak trees, glistening waterways and assorted gardens. Those gardens initially refused to acknowledge the enslaved labor responsible for their pristine aspects, though they have over time incorporated Black perspectives. The purpose of the IAAM was to, in part, create a sacred garden that would fertilize joy of the Black resilience while acknowledging the pain of Black oppression.
The Ancestors Garden does just that. Its Tide Tribute Fountain remembers the Black bodies — some survived and many drowned — who came through the Middle Passage. A series of sub gardens celebrates craftsmanship and labor of African Americans.
A wall of slave badges reminds us that Blacks in Charleston were once required to wear identifiers of their labor. The Dune Garden at the front of the museum is meant to capture guests’ attention and point to the sacred nature of the ground. After Hood’s February presentation, the concept of the IAAM as a sacred garden began to make more sense in my head.
Before viewers learn of Charleston’s brutal and complex history inside the museum, they are called to reckon with the city’s past — and perhaps their own individual lives — outside the museum. A member in the audience asked Hood, “How would you define a garden?” “It depends,” he answered, smiling. “I’ve seen gardens with no plants in them.
That’s because a garden is what exists in the mind of the artist.” Perhaps IAAM’s Ancestors Garden is a call for each of us to create our own gardens of reckoning. In the words of Dr.
Matthews, reckoning is dealing with what the complexities of our past have to do with our present inequities. Individually, perhaps each of us should seek to create sacred spaces — whether physical or not — to think about our own pasts and how our own complexities have shaped our current lived experiences. But collectively, we each have a responsibility to reflect on our role in creating a more beautiful and equitable garden that all of Charleston can enjoy.
Rickey Ciapha Dennis Jr. Rickey Ciapha Dennis Jr. worked as a metro beat reporter for The Post and Courier from 2018 to 2023, covering religion, the municipality of North Charleston and a wide range of other topics including race and history.
He is an ordained minister who serves as the pastor of Mt. Pisgah AME in Ridgeville, a church committed to the physical, social and spiritual liberation of all people..
