Charleston Needs That African American Museum. And Now.

The unmarked property, beside a big, bland postwar apartment building, is now an empty grass lot and de facto park. Cabin cruisers gently bob at a pier.

In this part of Charleston, just north of the historic, postcard district, industry has increasingly been giving way to boxy condominium developments with names like The Gadsden, after this city’s Revolutionary War-era patriot, merchant, and sometime slave trader, Christopher Gadsden.

Justice delayed, as the saying goes.

If it’s to be served, that empty plot, still waiting on private donations and $11 million in state funding, will be occupied by a subdued, modernist, 47,000-square-foot pavilion raised above the ground on thick columns clad in precast oyster-shell tabby.

It will house the International African American Museum.