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| Outrage |
A historic outrage has been lying in plain sight for many years: Gravestones from Maryland's historic Columbian Harmony Cemetery, which was the resting place for Black people for almost exactly 100 years.
The cemetery no longer exists. In 1960, commercial development seemed more important, even though 37,000 people were buried there. Among them were two sons of Frederick Douglass, Phillip Reid, who helped create the statue of Freedom that tops the US Capitol building, and Elizabeth Keckly, a confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln.
But in the name of commerce, the bodies were moved to another location. Now, a metro station stands where the cemetery used to be. The gravestones didn't make the journey. They were taken away and used as barriers to shore up eroding shorelines, as if they were blocks of cement, but cheaper.
Unbelievable -- but it happened.
This travesty only got serious attention when a white man, a Virginia state senator, encountered several gravestones on a ramble with his wife on property they had bought along the Potomac shore in 2016. They enlisted Virginia's governor, Ralph Northam, who in turn enlisted historians and volunteers who tracked down the place where the gravestones used to be.
Why did it have to be a white man? Why did it have to be a politician?
On Monday, a memorial park opened with 55 gravestones from the original cemetery, with the white dignitaries and some of the descendants of people who were buried in Columbian Harmony. One of them is a descendant of a Howard University professor who bears his name, William Hart. Hart said that his overwhelming emotion was of happiness and encouragement. He thanked the crowd, including the governors and other attendants for "honoring [his] family with [their] presence."
He's a better person than I am.
Eventually, the gravestones will be part of a one-acre memorial garden in Landover, MD.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/us/harmony-cemetery-gravestones-repatriated/index.html
Illustration: "Scream for all your worth" by id-iom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
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