SANKOFA SANCTUARYPlay is a practice of liberation
A Black mother and her young daughter laughing together at golden hour in a Louisville park, with a wooden swing frame and the river behind them, and a gold Sankofa emblem above

The Way
Forward
Begins By
Looking Back

At Sankofa Sanctuary, children and families reconnect with the land beneath their feet, the people who came before them, the community around them, and the possibilities within themselves.

About

Built by cousins, for cousins.

Sankofa Sanctuary at Chickasaw Park is the nation's first nature-based Black history children's park — the first in the country to fuse a nature-based playground, a children's museum, and a Black history and culture learning environment into a single, unified outdoor space where the play itself is the lesson.

There is no other park like this in America. Not a museum with a playground attached. Not a cultural garden with a swing set nearby. Here, every play element is intentionally designed around Black history and culture — so that a child climbing a wall is learning about York and Stephen Bishop at Mammoth Cave, a child swinging is moving through the world of Anansi, a child reading in the shade is sitting in the legacy of bell hooks. The architecture of the space is the curriculum.

Rooted in the nine Values of the Sankofa Path, Sankofa Sanctuary honors Living Legends, Future Ancestors, and Contemporary Builders — the full arc of Black excellence across time. Children don't just learn about Black history here. They run through it, climb it, dig in it, and carry it home in their bodies.

This is not a museum you visit quietly. This is a park you belong to.

Footprints to Freedom
$500K by August 8
Give now

Why Sankofa

A village built on memory, joy, and play.

Sankofa is a Twi word — to go back and reach for what was almost lost. In a 10-acre cultural park in West Louisville, Play Cousins Collective is reaching back so our kids, our cousins, and our elders can stand together in the same story.

It's a place to learn the names that schoolbooks skipped, to play the games our grandparents played, and to take rest under trees planted on purpose, in our honor.

A father and young girl building together on a wood stump in the forest
Two Black children playing together on a fallen log in a sunlit forest

The Story

Sankofa Path — a storybook

This storybook walks the Sanctuary with you. It follows a girl named Harriet — and as you move through the park, you become her, experiencing what she experienced step by step.

Listen or read along, play the games and crafts with your friends and family, and meet the legends whose courage and brilliance shaped the path beneath your feet.

Use the arrows to turn pages, and tap the symbols on each page to listen, play, and learn.

Sankofa Path storybook, page 1

Page 1 of 17

Where the ancestors gather, the drum begins to speak.

LEGENDS & CONTEMPORARY BUILDERS

Sankofa means returning for what was left behind. Every grove, garden, and gathering space in this Sanctuary is named for an ancestor or living elder whose life embodies one of the Nguzo Saba — the nine principles that root our children in who they are. This is our living lineage: the legends who carved the path and the contemporary cousins still walking it forward today. Tap any principle below to sit with the honorees who embody it — and feel how their gifts continue to shape the cousins coming up behind them.

Honored under

UMOJA· UNITY

community, belonging, shared identity

Pedagogy

Freedom Play

Freedom Play is our pedagogy — joyful, place-based, Black-centered learning that treats play as practice for liberation.

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Watch this video from Kristen Williams, Play Cousins Collective's Executive Director, about play as reclamation.

Community Stories

A living archive, written by us

Voices, songs, art, and writing from the people who walk through this park.

Coming soon
Share your story · Coming soon
A yoga circle gathered along the riverbank with a child held in arms
Drummers and elders gathered around a stone altar beneath cottonwood trees
Children resting together on blankets inside a circle of cut tree stumps
Elders, drummers, and aunties holding ceremony with djembes in the trees
A speaker on the microphone leading the gathering beneath green canopy
Cousins moving together at sunset along the stone outcrop
A wide crowd gathered on the green, listening to the call of the drums
  1. The first stories are on their way. Be one of them.

Footprints to Freedom

$500K by August 8.

From Juneteenth to August 8, we're raising the resources to break ground, build out, and bring the park fully alive.

Who's already joined the circle

Cousins, neighbors, and partners walking with us.

These institutions have stepped in early. Your name — or your family's, your block's, your business's — belongs in this circle too.

Olmsted Parks Conservancy
Metro United Way
Bernheim Forest & Arboretum
Louisville / Jefferson County
Join the circleGive today

Every footprint matters. Walk with the cousins.

Moments from the village

What play as reclamation looks like.

Two cousins jumping in the mud, one cheering with arms raised
An elder teaching a child to play traditional drums above the river
Families gathered on tree stumps in a wooded clearing
A child resting on a painted canoe bench while elders meditate by the river
Two barefoot kids exploring a muddy patch together
Cousins gathered for play and storytelling beneath tall forest trees
A community market day unfolding along a wooded path
Families walking into a forest clearing lined with carved log benches
A young boy beaming as he holds a bright bouquet of flowers
Kids and elders dancing together in a circle under tall trees
A wide view of the community gathered on a green bluff at golden hour