This past August, Portsmouth, NH consecrated its African Burying Ground.The effort to restore an important part of Portsmouth’s African American past began in 2003, when human remains were found during some work on the infrastructure near the intersections of Chestnut and State Streets.The deceased were determined by experts to be of African descent.
It is estimated that some 200 African-American residents of Portsmouth were interred under the site. Contractors had stumbled upon Portsmouth’s 1705 African Burying Ground, once on the outskirts of the city. As Portsmouth expanded, the graves were slowly covered with fill and built or paved over. For a variety of reasons, the recovery of all 200 sets of remains proved impossible.
Instead, a memorial site is in progress. Its construction on the site where the remains were first found is the result of collaboration between members of the Black Portsmouth History Trail, Portsmouth city government officials, clergy, and The Museum of African Culture.The wall by the entrance to the burying ground, features a woman on one end, intended to represent Mother Africa. She reaches toward another figure, representing a Portsmouth slave. [1]
A similar discovery was made in South Philadelphia, on the site of the Mother Bethel Cemetery. Mother Bethel has an estimated 3,000 internments, which include some of the first free African-Americans in Philadelphia. [2]
The Cemetery has been called “the equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery.” [3] African American anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston expressed a desire for such a cemetery in 1945 letter to W.E.B. Du Bois, where in suggested that such a cemetery could serve as a monument to African-American luminaries such as Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass.
She wrote, let us “remove the bones of our dead celebrities to this spot. Let no Negro celebrities, no matter what financial condition they are in at death, lie in inconspicuous forgetfulness.” [4] Hurston hoped for a national monument, but cemeteries like Mother Bethel and perhaps Mount Auburn Cemetery (Baltimore, MD) was about as close there ever was to such a burial park. Much of Mother Bethel had been paved over to make a city park.
Restoring covered African American cemeteries is a sensitive process, both politically and historically. [5] In some cases, the graves serve as the only record of disenfranchised people who were not permitted to make their own history. The act of covering over these cemeteries is in effect, erasing the past. The handling of remains has other significances.
Many African traditions see a close relationship between the visible and invisible worlds. As a result, the importance of ancestors in many African traditions also make the treatment of the dead crucial. Any mistreatment of remains, or failure to observe proper burial ritual could doom the soul of the deceased to roam for eternity, and to render them unable to serve as a guardian for the descendants.
The mutilation of remains, or the denial of burial rituals was one form of punishment inflicted upon rebellious slaves by masters. [6] In this context, the mistreatment of African American burying grounds takes on another significance. If the remains are mishandled, it perpetuates the injustices and indignities of slavery.
In the case of Philadelphia, the question of how to approach a buried (or some might say erased) part of its black past remains unresolved. In Portsmouth, Chief Oscar Mokeme, a traditional Igbo spiritual healer was called in shortly after the discovery of the remains.
Chief Mokeme’s performed prayers to the remains buried underneath the streets of Portsmouth. Mokeme, local Christian clergy, and historians from Portsmouth’s Black History Trail have been involved since the initial discovery of the remains, to insure that their treatment was respectful. The ceremony concluded with the reading of the 200 people interred at the 1705 Burying Ground, an act of restoring Portsmouth’s forgotten past to current memory.
Notes:
[1] Joel Kost, “Portsmouth’s African Burying Ground Consecrated,” Fosters Daily Democrat, 18 August 2014. An animated walk-through of the future memorial, which is slated to be finished in November 2014, can be found here: http://www.africanburyinggroundnh.org/mpd.html
[2]”Philadelphia Playground Site of 3,000 African-American Graves, Archaeologists Find,” The Huffington Post (29 July 2013): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/philadelphia-playground-african...
[3} Michael Coard, How 3,000 Desecrated Black Graves Were Found, Saved, in South Philly, “ Philadelphia Magazine (29 July 2013): http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/07/29/3000-black-graves/
[4] Michael Kammen, Digging Up the Dead: A History of Notable American Reburials (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 26.
[5] Jessica Parr, “Guest Post: Reclaiming a Buried Past: Slavery, Memory, Public History, and Portsmouth’s African Burying Ground,” The Junto (18 September 2014): http://earlyamericanists.com/2014/09/18/guest-post-reclaiming-a-buried-p...
[6] Douglas R. Egerton, “A Peculiar Mark of Infamy: Dismemberment, Burial, and Rebelliousness in Slave Societies,” in Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein, eds, Mortal Remains: Death in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 149; and Kami Fletcher, “Written in Stone: the Importance of African American Burial Grounds,” African American Intellectual History Society, 24 August 2014..
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