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Remembering Our Burial Sites
An all-too common occurrence is the loss of early black burial sites. Sometimes they are actively plowed under, built over. The memory of them dwindles, and once sacred ground becomes like one burial ground in Eufaula, Alabama. There are no headstones commemorating the once enslaved in the town graveyard there, just a plaque proclaiming a plain slope of grass the Negro Cemetery, a final resting place for ex-slaves. Anyone or no one could be buried under that grassy slope. Only trust and faith make it so.
But a group of professors and scholars at New York’s Fordham University does not want folks to be forced to go merely on trust and faith. Working with the belief that all burial sites are sacred, the Department of African and African American Studies is attempting to document the existence and location of as many African-American cemetaries, graveyards, and resting places as possible, before they are gone and forgotten.
The Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans was established by director Sandra Arnold after she became interested in preserving American slave burial grounds when she found the graves of her ancestors in a plantation cemetery. A similar site called Find-A-Grave, begun in 1995, claims millions of documented gravesites—but unlike Find-a-Grave, which encompasses sites of all types, the Fordham University project is dedicated to only those sites of people who were once slaves.
The database is accepting online submissions on burial sites in any condition—from well-tended to neglected and abandoned—and from varied sources, including communities, churches, private property owners, descendants, and any person dedicated to preservation. Even an individual reporting one grave can become an important contributor.
This means you, Legacy readers. You can be a history keeper. If you know of a cemetery or plot of land that holds the graves of the enslaved or formerly enslaved, visit the burial database project’s submission page. The site asks for family names associated with the burial ground; evidence that makes you suspect it is a slave cemetery; photos, if you can provide them, and other supporting materials.
A woman pays respect to the remains of long-dead Africans—many from Ghana, Nigeria, the Congo, and Madagascar. Forgotten for centuries their graves were rediscovered in 1991 and reinterred in a ceremony in October 2003. ©2013 John T. Stuart
The information you might have can never be too small for a project like this. You can make a difference. When construction began for a government building in 1991, and more than 400 skeletons of seventeenth and eighteenth century Africans were found, it took the dedication of everyone from government workers and scholars to every day citizens to stop the construction, study, and catalog the bones and artifacts, and lay them to rest again. Those long-dead Africans—it is estimated that some 15,000 were buried in an area that covered 6.6 acres—had been forgotten for centuries. Now the African Burial Ground is part of the National Park Service .
For more information about the Burial Database Project visit www.vanishinghistory.org
Opening image: Members of an African-American masons group carry caskets hand carved in Africa. ©2013 John T. Stuart
In Case You Missed It . . .
Last month, a moment that was important to American history got lost in the swirl of the usual economic doom saying, political punditry, celebrity worship: On November 1, President Obama signed a proclamation designating Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, a national monument. It is not glamorous or sexy or controversial, but it is significant. Using his authority under the Antiquities Act, (Theodore Roosevelt used it in 1906 to establish America’s first national monument, Devil’s Tower in Wyoming) President Obama’s stroke of a pen not only protected the recently decommissioned fort and the land it sits on, but in the process of preserving the fort will bring the possibility of up to 3,000 jobs to the area and pouring millions of dollars into the local economy.
“. . . One of the great pleasures of this job, but also one of my responsibilities, is making sure that we are preserving our nation’s treasures so that they can be enjoyed by our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren,” said the President before he signed the order. “ And over the years, over 100 sites have been set aside as national monuments — everything from the Statue of Liberty to the Grand Canyon….
“This is going to give an opportunity for people from all across the country to travel to Fort Monroe and trace the history that has been so important to making America what it is.”
Fort Monroe has the historic, if awful distinction, of “hosting” the first group of Africans in North America (individual Africans had come with the Spanish conquistadors as early as the fifteenth century). A Dutch ship’s captain dropped anchor in the harbor there in 1619 with several indentured African servants (the President said slaves; I am not going to quibble, indentured servants were often treated like slaves, the distinction being that years of indenture were finite). But the captain got picky, decided the site wasn’t adequate, collected some provisions and moved on to Jamestown. The Africans never got off the boat as far as can be ascertained.
In our Summer 2004 issue we took readers to Hampton to uncover its black history. One of the stops on our quest to reveal some surprising things about the port city, including the story about the Africans, was to our now newest national monument. Below is an excerpt from the article Surprising Hampton:
“We jump into a van for the short drive to Fort Monroe. Out the window to my left I see long stretches of green lawns, punctuated with piers reaching out to the bay and graceful white gazebos. This is the Buckroe Beach area. In 1897 a local entrepreneur opened a hotel, dancing pavilion, and amusement park here, all of which were off-limits to black people. So a local businessman named F. D. Banks, along with a few partners, promptly formed the Bay Shore Hotel Corporation. They raised $15,000 to buy property along the bay adjoining Buckroe Beach and built a top-notch resort for African-Americans. The hotel opened for business in 1898; by 1930 the Bay Shore Hotel, which began life as a four-room cottage, had grown to a three-story beach-front establishment with 70 rooms and long porches facing the water. The resort’s popularity waned some after a hurricane severely damaged the buildings in 1933, but big-name African-American entertainers, including Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong, still performed there. The Bay Shore property was sold in 1977 to developers who tore down the original structures.
We cross the Mercury Boulevard bridge over the calm blue-brown waters of Mill Creek (which is really an inlet) to Fort Monroe. Well before the Civil War, 8 percent of Hampton’s sizable black population was free. Whites in Hampton believed in slavery but did not, as a rule, tolerate cruelty. In one instance, a slave ran away from a harsh master and stayed right in town, without ever being caught and returned. However well treated, though, slaves were still slaves, and as we found out at the fort, there would come a time when Hampton’s slaves would run away in droves.
Fort Monroe is the oldest fort in the United States to still be operated by the military. The cornerstone was laid in 1819, and it was garrisoned in 1823 though not completed until 1834. It is the largest stone fort in the country, and the only active one with a moat (three to four feet deep, eight feet deep at high tide). Crabs, jellyfish, and other critters live in its waters.
Across the moat, through the postern (back) gate into the fort, we enter the first of a series of low, arched stone-and-brick rooms. These form the Casemate Museum (a casemate is a chamber in the wall of a fort used for storage, living quarters, or positioning cannon). At Fort Monroe 32-pounder guns hind the fort’s other name, Freedom Fort.
It seems it all started in 1861, when three slaves sought haven here by swimming across the harbor from Sewell’s Point in Norfolk. They belonged to a Colonel Mallory, who demanded them back. But Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, who was in command, told Mallory that since Virginia was no longer a part of the Union (it along with 10 other states had seceded from the Union in 1860 and 1861 to form the Confederacy), it could no longer benefit from U.S. laws, which included the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Therefore, Major General Butler concluded, the slaves were “contraband” and did not have to be returned.
After Butler’s declaration, nearly 900 refugee slaves ran for the fort. When the Confederate military heard a rumor that the Union Army was going to quarter refugees along with soldiers in Hampton, it burned the town to the ground. One of the only buildings to survive was St. John’s, the church downtown with the lyrical bell. I recall it, and the words of the Confederate private that I read in the rotunda of the museum the day before: “As the smoke ascended to the heavens . . . I thought of how my little hometown was being made a sacrifice to the god of war.”
The ex-slaves did not just run to Fort Monroe and hide; many joined the Union Army. Three units of U.S. Colored Troops (the First and Second U.S. Cavalries and the Battery B Second U.S. Light Artillery) were formed at Fort Monroe; all three saw action in and around Hampton. And for a short time toward the end of the war, Harriet Tubman worked at the fort, as a nurse at the contraband hospital.
The drawing depicts the southern slaves fleeing to the sally port to enter into Fort Monroe to reach the freedom of the Union Army which occupied Fort Monroe during the Civil War.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth (1922-2011)
American Legacy mourns the loss of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader of the civil rights movement who was at the forefront of the battle against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Calmly, doggedly, and at great risk to his life, he chipped away at the implacable system that was Jim Crow until it was dismantled. Below is a Fall 2006 article on his struggle, and eventual victory.
ON ONE SIDE WAS THE SQUAT, PUGNACIOUS EUGENE “BULL” CONNOR, a white former radio baseball announcer who made segregation his issue in Birmingham, Alabama. On the other was Fred Shuttlesworth, a wiry, combative black preacher who could fire up an audience like few others, the man who “warmed up the crowd before they brought [Martin Luther] King on to speak,” one veteran Birmingham detective remembered.
Their battleground was the Birmingham of the 1950s and 1960s, described by King in his 1963 book Why We Can’t Wait as “the most segregated city in America.” Connor, who found a place on the Birmingham City Commission in the 1930s, fought to keep his town segregated long after other Southern cities had left Jim Crow behind. Shuttlesworth—who survived Ku Klux Klan bombing attempts, beatings, and harassment by white officials—waged a decade-long battle to knock down the barriers that Connor had sworn to protect.
*Please note: The image on the opening page is not Fred Shuttlesworth. A mistake was made in production and the actual image was switched.
All Gone Home
Back in December 2008, prompted by the death of the folk music queen Odetta, I began to prepare an entry about all of the musical lights the world has lost since our 2008 Music issue. The plan was to post it here during Black Music month. But it seemed that every time I started to work on it, another name had to be added. Already on my list was Bo Diddley, who brought American music his timeless rhythm, and Isaac Hayes, funk king extraordinaire, both of whom died in the summer of 2008. In the fall we lost Levi Stubbs, lead singer of The Four Tops, Dee Dee Warwick, and Miriam Makeba, the South African singer and civil rights activist who broke down barriers around the world with her music and message (Remember “Pata Pata”?) Then came Odetta, followed by the unmatchable Eartha Kitt on Christmas. At the beginning of this month, just three days in, my mom called me to tell me that the blues queen Koko Taylor had passed.
Yesterday, I got on the train to go home and a man who sat behind me said to anyone in the car within earshot “Michael Jackson is dead”. One woman said, “you must have gotten that confused with someone else.” Most people simply did not believe him at first—I think we’ve all been misled by the media rumor mills at least once. But it was more than that. He was only 50 years old. And this man had been a part of American culture for more than four decades, nearly all my life (and I’m 46). When I got off the train and pulled out my phone, I saw that I had several missed calls and messages, one from a person I know had to hunt for my number. The knowledge of his death spread swiftly through all quarters, to all corners.
When I was 7 years old, I decided I was going to marry my first crush. Michael Jackson’s poster went up on my closet door where I could see him before I went to sleep at night. It was 1969 and the Jackson 5 had come out with their first hit “I Want You Back”. Michael would have been around 11. For a lot of us little black girls, he was our prince charming, handsome and talented, and so much cooler than, say, Donny Osmond (sorry!).
Yes, his personal life was murky and sometimes disturbing, and there were deep and troubling questions left unanswered. They may yet be answered, and we may be shocked; I hope not. Still I think back to those more innocent times and the fact that Michael Jackson enriched and transformed the American musical songbook forever. That cannot be denied.
—Audrey Peterson
On the Mall/Tuskegee Airmen
In the run up to the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C. on August 28, smaller stories bubble to the surface. One that caught our notice was an NPR report about the Tuskegee Airmen—America’s first black military pilots—and their 70th anniversary, celebrated at their national convention last week. The veterans, numbering some 100 (more than 1,000 men trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama beginning July 1941) got a special preview of the MLK monument.
Perhaps as exciting for the airmen is that one of their original planes, a 1944 Stearman biplane is being donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The story of the Spirit of Tuskegee’s journey from training plane to crop duster to the museum can be read here.
Over the years we’ve had the pleasure of meeting several of the airmen—members of 99th Pursuit Squadron, later part of the 332nd Fighter Group,—including the late Lee Archer who helped us properly identify an illustration of a P51 Mustang, a fighter plane the airmen flew during World War II. The retired airforce lieutenant colonel, who shot down five German Messerschmitt 109s during his combat tour told us that the Tuskegee Airmen were the only squadron in the history of the Air Force to fly so many different types of planes—the P-40 Warhawk, the P-39 Aircobra, the P-47 Thunderbolt, and the P-51—within the course of a single tour of duty. The Tuskegee airmen’s P-51s were nicknamed Redtails because of their distinctive paint job.
Keep your eyes open for a new film Red Tails coming in January 2012
Throwback Soundtrack: Black Orpheus (1959)
The truly perfect film Black Orpehus is 52 years old and it still fascinates. I’ve been to Brazil since the first time I saw the movie at least 20 years ago, and darned if the energy and music and beauty in Salvador da Bahia in 2005 wasn’t like that in Rio in 1959. A synopsis from Gene Seymour in an article for the Fall 2005 issue of American Legacy
“The ill-starred ancient Greek romance of Eurydice (played by the luminous Marpessa Dawn, who was actually African-American and Filipino from Pittsburgh) and Orpheus (Breno Mello) takes place in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval, with an all-black, mostly Brazilian cast, and evocative samba soundtrack by Luiz Bonfá and Antônio Carlos Jobim. With the success of this film, its director Marcel Camus and screenwriter Vinicius de Moraes broadened the global perspective on black cultures and helped ignite the bossa nova movement that would seduce music lovers in both hemispheres.
The film won the Palm D’or at Cannes in 1959, and the Oscar and Golden Globe for best foreign film in 1960. It was shot mostly in a favela (ghetto) in the Leme neighborhood of Rio giving us snapshots of a time and place gone some nearly half a century.
Put criticisms about the oversimplification of black lives and colonial attitudes that render the black Brazilians childlike aside if you can (for indeed some of the characters come off as one-dimensional and buffoonish and there is a point where you feel like you may be watching a panorama f the ghetto ) and enjoy the film for the colors, the music, the rhythm, (the infectious “O Nosso Amor” makes it impossible for anyone not to get up and dance!) the atmosphere is magic! Queue it, rent it, borrow it from the library if you can (a tip for New Yorkers, the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the Public Library will be screening Black Orpehus on July 10 at 2:00). Turner Classic Movies (TCM) offers the film from time to time, or as a last resort, buy it.
Close your eyes while listening to “Felicidade,” “Manha de Carnaval” or “Samba de Orfeu” and try not to dream of a magical place called Brazil.—Audrey Peterson
What We’re Listening to: Etta James
We’re determined not to let our most recent memory of Etta James be about the non-feud that jumped off between James and Beyonce Knowles around the song “At Last” at the inaugural ball. It was silly, and we can’t always let the media tell us who to be mad at. Can you imagine if there had been social media and viral video back in the day picking up conversations and utterances best left unseen? Just imagine how many of our superstars would be in trouble today. All of this is to say there is room for all of our magnificent entertainers, from every generation, warts and all.
Interesting to me that Beyonce and Etta were teenagers when their careers hit pivotal moments: Beyonce was 17 when Columbia signed her group Destiny’s Child. Etta was 14 or 15 when she formed the doo-wop group the Peaches. Her first hit was in 1955, The Wallflower Song (Roll with me Henry),” which topped the Billboard chart for four weeks.
“The Wallflower” and 14 other songs from her early career (1955-1957) can be found on Etta James: The Essential Modern Records Collection (Virgin). Although everything on this album has been released under other labels beside the original (Los Angeles-based Modern Records went bankrupt in the 1960s), because it is set up chronologically, we can hear a bit of the evolution of Etta’s style as she shimmies through Wallflower, “Hey Henry” and “Good Rockin’ Daddy.”
And that voice! That teenage girl sounds like the grown woman she would come to be when in 1960 she recorded “At Last,” a 1941 song written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren for the musical film Orchestra Wives. Glenn Miller and his orchestra played it and you can find it on Itunes. The original version is nice in an old-timey movie kind of way, but I can almost bet that had Etta James not recorded her version of the song, we may not ever have heard it.
James’s career was slowed by her addiction to heroin, but she did continue to record with Chess Records, then Warner Brothers, and earning a Grammy nomination for her 1973 album Etta James. She was inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (1993) and The Blues Hall Of Fame (2001), but long before all of this she was just a teenage girl with a gritty style and a lot of talent.
Etta James: The Essential Modern Records Collection (Virgin, 2011)
photo courtesy Virgin Records
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