A community fight over the College of Charleston’s plans to build new dorms on an 18the century burial site is intensifying online as the school prepares to demolish the historic YWCA downtown.
An online petition called No Beds Over Bodies has collected more than 1,000 signatures. Those opposed to the multi-level dorms are concerned because the college’s own recent research shows that the Coming Street site served as a public burial ground for the poor between 1790 and 1807.
It’s believed that as many as 12,000 people may be buried there. That could include immigrants, orphans, Native Americans, and Africans who did not survive the transatlantic journey into slavery. The public cemetery quickly filled up just before the importation of Africans was prohibited in 1808. By then, the city had banned slave ships from dumping bodies overboard…