The Hidden History of African-American Burial Sites in the Antebellum South

[lapucelle]

Enslaved people used codes to mark graves on plantation grounds

Death was a hyper-present reality for enslaved children and adults alike, whether by illness or at the hands of their owner. And when the enslaved died in the Antebellum South, African-Americans were forced to find creative ways to honor them. This was partially due to widespread white fear that any black collective coming together could be an opportunity for the group to devise an exit strategy from the plantation. Funerals necessitate that people gather for a final goodbye, so these mortuary traditions were commonly monitored and squelched by overseers.

Unsurprisingly, slaveholders didn’t bother to honor those who died–a direct reflection of the lack of respectful treatment they granted the enslaved while they were alive. Through the use of non-traditional grave markers in community run cemeteries throughout the slave holding states, often obscured as a form of protection, black Americans found a way to take ownership over the final resting places of their kin.

https://bit.ly/3cY9c1c

[Budi]

1. "Children's graves were demarcated by a stone even more cherished: pink quartz"

Children’s graves were demarcated by a stone even more cherished; in some family circles, pink quartz indicated a child’s grave.

At Avoca in particular, two quartz markers were uncovered, visibly unchanged from their natural state. “The graves we have that are covered with pink quartz, two of those graves are short. [They’re] tiny and little graves,” Hudson says.
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Dr. Rainville’s work, which reconstructs communities based on signs left upon death, brings history to present-day. “Gravestones can sometimes serve as silent witnesses, a physical reminder of a tragic event, that otherwise can be, as it were, whitewashed from the landscape.”

In the same vein, the team at the Avoca Museum finds the resurrection of its on-site African-American cemetery important, says Hudson, because “it helps to give a voice to people who no longer have one.”
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A sacred & worthy read. Thank you, lapucelle

[lapucelle]

2. That paragraph hit me hard as well.

I remember when PBS did its series on slavery, there was an episode that featured the actor Dennis Haysbert. Some of his ancestors where enslaved, and he was shown a document that recorded the "sale" of members of his family. One was a two year old child.

He kept saying "two years old" and shaking his head in stunned disbelief.

[Budi]

3. 🙁

*

[Budi]

4. K & R a million