The story begins in New York. In 1959, a man named Walter Eugene King traveled to Cuba and became the first African American initiated into the Orisha priesthood. He took the name Efuntola Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi and returned to Harlem, where he established the Yoruba Temple in 1960. But city life proved difficult for what he envisioned. The drumming drew complaints. The tourists disrupted worship. He looked south, first to Savannah, Georgia, where similar conflicts arose, and then to the rural quiet of Beaufort County. In 1970, Adefunmi and his followers relocated seven Yoruba temples from Harlem to a patch of land near Sheldon, declaring it an independent African kingdom on American soil.

The village was constructed to mirror the traditional Yoruba city-states of what is now southwestern Nigeria. It took its name from the Oyo Empire, one of the most powerful kingdoms in West African history, which flourished from the 1300s through the early 1800s. During the 1970s, riding the energy of the Black Power movement, Oyotunji grew rapidly. The population swelled from five residents to between 200 and 250. Adefunmi declared himself Oba -- king -- and governed the village according to Yoruba customs and religious practices centered on the worship of the orishas, the deities of the Yoruba tradition. The village became one of the premier tourist destinations in the South Carolina Lowcountry, drawing visitors curious about this transplanted piece of West Africa thriving among the pine trees and palmettos.

Oba Adefunmi I died in 2005 after thirty-five years on the throne. His son, Adejuyigbe Adefunmi II, succeeded him and set about modernizing the village's infrastructure while preserving its cultural mission. The younger Adefunmi updated public works and continued welcoming visitors to learn about Yoruba religion, art, and governance. The population had diminished from its 1970s peak to between five and nine families, but the village endured as a living cultural institution. Then in July 2024, tragedy struck: Adefunmi II was fatally stabbed by his sister following a heated argument. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, leaving the kingdom's future uncertain.

Oyotunji exists at a remarkable intersection of history and intention. It sits in the Lowcountry, the same region where enslaved Africans -- many of them Yoruba -- were brought ashore at ports like Charleston and Beaufort. The village's founders chose this land not by accident but by a kind of spiritual logic, planting Yoruba temples in soil where Yoruba descendants had labored for generations. Whether the village grows again or fades into the oaks, it has already achieved something singular: for more than half a century, a West African kingdom has stood in rural South Carolina, its name a declaration that what was taken can be reclaimed.