A couple times a year, Mary Mack would visit the centuries-old Big House Cemetery on St Helena Island, South Carolina, to pay respect to her grandparents. The cemetery is in an idyllic location, situated on a waterfront property and surrounded by large oak trees. On cleanup days, Mack gathered leaves and branches, swept off vaults, and raked up debris. As a Gullah Geechee woman, the descendant of formerly enslaved west Africans in the sea islands of the south-eastern US, Mack saw the burial ground as tying together past, present and future generations. But in the spring of 2024, she was shocked to learn that landowners blocked access to the Gullah Geechee cemetery through padlocked gates.
“We’ve not been able to go in and clean the cemetery. We’ve not been able to go in and bury deceased loved ones,” Mack told the Guardian last year. “It’s important for the younger folks to know that we don’t just bury our loved ones and leave them there. The way we love them in life is the way we love them in death. And so to continue that bond so that it passes on to the younger generation, it’s very important.”
