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Your Help is Needed on the Statewide African American Cemeteries Survey

In 2021, the Maryland General Assembly directed the Maryland Commission on African American History & Culture and the Maryland Historical Trust to study the needs of historic African American cemeteries, with feedback from stakeholders including the Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites, Preservation Maryland, descendant communities, and the general public.

This momentous and urgent project will culminate in a report with recommendations to the General Assembly in the spring of 2022. Please help your representatives understand the challenges faced by African American burial sites by filling out the survey HERE. Please alert churches, organizations, and other cemetery stakeholders about this important statewide effort.

For more information, see https://africanamerican.maryland.gov/historic-african-american-cemetery-project/
Online survey: https://forms.gle/QwPKBDUPDwW7jFuRA
Printable survey form: AfricanAmericanCemeterySurvey20212022.pdf

The Tragic Backstory Behind a Historic Route 1 Cemetery

Just down Route 1 in D.C., a small plaque on a concrete column near the exit of the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station is all that’s left of the historic Columbian Harmony Cemetery, once the city’s most prominent African-American cemetery.

But the plaque does not tell the whole story.

“Many distinguished black citizens including civil war veterans were buried in this cemetery,” it reads. “These bodies now rest in the new National Harmony Memorial Park Cemetery in Maryland.”

The Metro station, which is now surrounded by apartments and shops, is gaining new attention for a bar opening soon in a renovated Metro car parked on site.

But the tragic backstory of the land beneath the Metro station is not as widely known.

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Trader Foundation Board of Directors Positions

The Trader Foundation for Maryland Burial Sites is seeking candidates for open positions on its Board of Directors. Those wishing to apply should email traderfoundationmd@gmail.com. The Board meets twice each year to receive, review, and respond to grant applications for cemetery projects throughout the State of Maryland. The position requires that you assess each application and evaluate the merits of providing funding to accomplish its goal. Comments and questions should be sent to the email address above.

Hundreds turn out Juneteenth to stop desecration of Maryland cemetery

BETHESDA, Md.—Residents here used the occasion of Juneteenth celebrations, for the first time an official national holiday, to step up an ongoing struggle to stop the desecration of an African cemetery.

The Moses Cemetery is a place where freed Africans are buried, part of a tightly-knit Black enclave formed in the wake of the abolition of slavery in Maryland.

A coalition of activists had to be formed to save the cemetery after the arrival in 2017 of a company determined to build a self-storage facility on the site.

Several hundred members and supporters of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition (BACC), Macedonia Baptist Church, Claudia Jones School for Political Education, and speakers from local anti-racist organizations celebrated Juneteenth at the Moses African Cemetery on Saturday. The coalition, led by Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, seeks to stop the desecration of the Cemetery and memorialize the freed Africans buried there.

In 2017, the Montgomery County Planning Board gave self-storage developer 1784 Capital Holdings permission to build a facility on land legally designated “Parcels 242 and 191,” less than 100 yards from the historic cemetery. In July 2017, researchers from the Ottery Group investigated local “death notices and funeral announcements” from the early 20th century and found documentation that Moses Cemetery “received new internments” between 1911 and 1944.

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Cemetery preservation group aids Dorchester’s New Revived Church

[Watch the event on YouTube!]

TAYLORS ISLAND — Volunteers from around the region joined congregants of New Revived United Methodist Church on June 19 to restore its adjoining cemetery. The buzz of chainsaws blended the rumbling of a small excavator, as crews cut and removed timber, stumps and debris that had fallen on the resting places.

The effort was led by Eddie Dean, who operates the Lower Shore Cemetery Preservation Organization, a group that has been active in finding some of the more obscure — sometimes simply hidden — grave sites in the Dorchester, and giving them the care Mr. Dean and his associates believe they deserve.

Asked why the strenuous and time-consuming work is done, Mr. Dean paused for a moment before saying, “How couldn’t you?”

On a mission

The group’s social media site describes its work, saying, “The focus of this organization is the conservation and preservation of historic cemeteries on the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland. Advocacy through outreach promoting education in restoration and documentation of these sacred burial grounds.”

That sense of mission has taken Mr. Dean throughout the region. Sometimes, it leads to graveyards like New Revived UMC’s, which are in relatively good shape, and at other times, to spots that are nearly invisible to the eye or almost lost in the records.

The cemeteries, with the few words and dates on the headstones, hold not only the remains of ancestors, but information on their lives and situations. Some are the simplest markers, made by pouring concrete into frames and tracing a name into the wet material.

Others share clues on the work done by the deceased, such as that of one of the Opher brothers in Hargis. His stone shows that he was a veteran of the Second World War, who served in the 3515 Quartermaster Truck Company.

A fallen tree or overgrown grass could hide the record of a serviceman’s time in the army, and eventually cause his contribution to be forgotten.

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