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Cayce working to find, preserve Black cemeteries

The town is hosting a community meeting Tuesday, January 24th in hopes to learn more about cemetery locations throughout city limits.

CAYCE, S.C. — There are lost pieces of history below the ground in the City of Cayce and the town is now working to uncover it.

The mission is to find local Black cemeteries from the  Colonial past and to assess their preservation needs. 

The city needs your help in doing so, too.

They're hosting a community meeting next Tuesday from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. to learn where some of these unmarked cemeteries might be.

"We're hoping to assess the conditions of those cemeteries or graves and then we're hoping they'll give us recommendations on what needs to be done for historic preservation," said Andy Thomas, Cayce Historical Museum curator, and grant manager.

The $15,000 grant that they received in December from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History is what's allowing the city of Cayce to contract with a historical surveying company so that this history isn't forgotten, erased, or passed by.

"We think that this is important. It tells a story of the Cayce community here, the African American side of that story and it's being inclusive and it's enriching the history that we already know about with the City of Cayce," Thomas said.

Right now the only cemetery the city knows about is about a block or two away from city hall. 

Research by the Cayce Museum indicates it's either an unmarked slave cemetery or a cemetery belonging to a local family.  

According to the Cayce Museum, they're hoping surveyors are able to finish their work by July.

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