Tombstones at the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Portsmouth, Va., Tuesday, March 23, 2021. Many Black Americans excluded from white-owned cemeteries built their own burial spaces, and their descendants are working to preserve the grounds. Racism still haunts these cemeteries, though. Many are at risk of being lost and lack the support other cemeteries have received.
“When I walk through the cemetery, it’s like walking down the old streets of my community,” she said. “I’m in the process of telling their story, because they can no longer tell their story,” Burroughs said.In Chicago, wealthy white residents were laid to rest beside towering monuments in manicured lawns while people of color and low-income residents were buried in potter’s fields soaked with quicklime and with only wooden paddles identifying their locations.
Black people weren’t the only ones excluded from white cemeteries or who organized to protect the dignity of their dead. The Chinese Cemetery of Los Angeles was established by a mutual aid group in 1922 as a burial ground for Chinese Americans then barred from buying burial plots. Countless Native American tribes have mounted decadeslong efforts to reclaim and rebury their ancestors’ remains.Many groups built their own cemeteries as “a form of resistance,” Rosenow said.
In many cases, the cemeteries left behind are hidden. A Tallahassee, Florida, golf course lays atop a burial space for slaves. A Black church cemetery has been paved over in Williamsburg, Virginia. The University of Pennsylvania campus sits on top of a 19th century Black cemetery. Bone fragments were found at the 126th Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus depot in East Harlem, New York, which also was once a Black burial ground.
I just read where black and Asian colonial fighters in World War I were not allowed a decent burial by the United Kingdom.
Now cemeteries. What's next, toilets?
WOW 👏. It's everyday now.
We need to keep things as they were, study them, and prevent it from happening again.
White cemeteries are a reflection of deep segregation history -duckaroo3
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