Kamau Sadiki
Kamau Sadiki was born and raised in Greenwood, SC USA. He received a degree in Engineering Technology from Piedmont Technical College and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Howard University. He spent 40 years with the US Army Corps of Engineers, retiring in 2017 as the Chief Executive Officer of the Corps of Engineers Hydropower Business Line. He is a Board of Directors member and Lead Instructor with Diving With A Purpose (DWP), an organization committed to resurrecting the stories of shipwrecks involved in the Transatlantic Era of African Enslavement (TEAE) through underwater archaeology documentation. He is a certified Professional Association of Dive Instructors (PADI) Divemaster with more than 1,600 open water SCUBA dives. He was featured in the cover story of the March 2022 National Geographic magazine and companion podcast entitled “Into the Depths” that explores the work of DWP and the exceptional journey of National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts as she follows Black scuba divers across the globe in search of shipwrecks involved in the TEAE. Kamau has actively worked on the search and underwater documentation of five TEAE shipwrecks including the pirated ship Guerrero in southern Florida. He was a member of the field team that confirmed the location of the TEAE shipwreck Clotilda in the Mobile River in Alabama, the last ship to bring captured Africans into the USA with the intent to enslave them. He is one of only three African American divers that have entered an actual cargo hold of a TEAE shipwreck, the space in which captured Africans experienced the horror and trauma of the Atlantic Middle Passage crossing. He is featured in the October 2022 release of the documentary film Descendant that tells the story of the Clotilda descendant community of Africatown near Mobile, Alabama USA. Kamau has conducted numerous lectures and presentations on TEAE shipwrecks, memory reclamation and resistance. He has worked on multiple shipwreck sites around Mozambique Island, Mozambique, South Africa, and shipwrecks in the NOAA Thunder Bay and Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuaries and Biscayne National Marine Park off the southern Florida coast, Cahuita National Park, Costa Rica and in St. John, US Virgin Islands. |
Hours
Sunday - Monday Closed Tuesday - Friday 10 AM - 5 PM Saturday 10 AM - 3 PM |
Contact
The Arts Center of Greenwood 120 Main Street Greenwood, SC 29646 (864) 388 - 7800 [email protected] |