Building the Future on Sacred Ground: Inside Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park’s New Archaeological Research Facility

Building the Future on Sacred Ground: Inside Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park’s New Archaeological Research Facility

On Hilton Head Island, where beach traffic and resort life dominate the modern imagination, there is a stretch of land that insists on a different tempo. It is quieter, more deliberate. This is Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park, the site of the first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States. And rising there now is the first permanent structure ever built on that historic ground: the Archaeological Research Facility a…