Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters in Raleigh celebrated Juneteenth this year by pulling down the statues of two Confederate soldiers on the Capitol grounds.
More quietly, just hours before and less than a mile away, a handful
of volunteers paid tribute to forgotten monuments: the graves of
enslaved and free Black people at the Raleigh City Cemetery, the city’s
oldest public burial ground. Clad in bright yellow vests, the volunteers
gathered around Ryan Lerch, a Raleigh parks superintendent, who talked
about the Black residents buried there.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the 7.68-acre
Raleigh City Cemetery is one of only two public cemeteries in the state.
(The other is in New Bern.) With one entrance at Hargett and East
streets and another on New Bern Avenue, the park is tucked into a
residential area in the shadow of downtown.
The cemetery contains the remains of the city’s earliest settlers and
state legislators alongside the stonemasons from Scotland and England
who built the State Capitol. When the Raleigh City Cemeteries
Preservation nonprofit was formed in 2006, the acre-and-a-half Black
section was intact but badly neglected. Many of the tombstones had been
overturned. Some were broken. Others were marred with graffiti.
RCCP partnered with city officials to hire Dean Ruedrich, a
restoration specialist who had worked all over the country rebuilding
slave cabins and restoring grave markers, to rehabilitate the enslaved
section, which was in the worst shape. When it was filled in 1871, it
was closed, and the city created the Mt. Hope Cemetery to house the
remains of Black citizens.
Even though 1,000 Black people are buried here, only 60 monuments and
grave markers remained when restoration work began. RCCP member Jane
Thurman says some had been vandalized, while others were removed by
family members. When Ruedrich started his restoration he found that some
tombstones in the Black section had sunk about an inch underground over
time. Most of the markers lay flat in the grass after breaking off at
the base.
Ruedrich, who died last year, started working in the enslaved section
in 2015, finishing three years later. He built new bases for the fallen
monuments. He dug up others and found several more, including
footstones that contained only the initials of the deceased.
“One of the best days in my life was standing in that section, seeing those graves upright,” Thurman says.
Many of the thin, time-scarred concrete and marble tombstones are
inscribed with names and dates that are barely legible. Some are
nameless. There are several with only the curving tops visible. In many
ways, these modest, weathered markers are analogous to the physical and
psychological condition of the people they stand to represent — gouged,
chipped, broken remnants that survived against all odds.
The Black graves in the Raleigh City Cemetery
offer a striking contrast to the imposing Confederate monuments that
are falling across the national landscape. The markers are a metaphor
for what was — the majestic “big house” of the slaveowners in close
proximity to the terrible quarters where the enslaved lived — and what is:
the refurbishing and building of white-owned homes next to creaky,
resource-neglected Black-owned dwellings. The global protests that
erupted after the killing of George Floyd are about the neglect and
desecration of Black bodies, which was already laid bare by the
pandemic.
Shelley M. Winters, one of the volunteers who helped clean branches
and brambles from the Black graves in Raleigh, echoed that sentiment.
“Where are the statues for the people who built the capitol?” she asks.
It was Winters who came up with the idea to clean the tombstones as a
somber and reflective means to honor Juneteenth by paying tribute to
those who died wanting freedom.
“It’s not just Black history,” Winters says. “This is Raleigh
history. It’s American history, and it should be honored as such. We
have no names, no faces for the people who physically built and
sustained this city.”
Winters is the niece of John Winters, who, before he died of
Parkinson’s disease in 2004, worked as a developer and is largely
responsible for Southeast Raleigh becoming a Black enclave. He served on
the city council and later became one of the first Black senators after
decades of Black voter suppression since the late 1800s. The Winters
family descendants were born free. There’s a plaque commemorating them
on East Street, a stone’s throw from the cemetery.
Shelley Winters served as chair of Raleigh’s citizens advisory
councils and the Atlantic CAC before they were disbanded by the city
council in February. She wanted to do something to honor the Juneteenth
holiday and called Grady Bussey, the chair of the city’s annual African
American Cultural Festival.
Bussey, Winters says, was unenthusiastic about “celebrating” the fact
that some Black captives endured two more years in forced labor camps
after President Lincoln proclaimed their freedom. But then Winters, who
is now a member of the city’s planning commission, had the idea of
giving dignity to the enslaved population by cleaning their gravesites.
“It was like a light bulb that hit me,” Winters says. “Juneteenth is
not just a point of freedom, but also to honor those who were enslaved.”
“We figured the best thing to do was paying homage to the slave ancestors,” Bussey adds.
Winters says she first reached out to the residents of Oberlin
Village, the formerly all-Black community that cleans the graves in its
own community cemetery each year. When she found out the residents had
not planned a cemetery cleaning for Juneteenth, Bussey suggested the
City Cemetery.
A little more than a dozen people showed up. The tombstones of the
enslaved, even with faded lettering and dates, told many stories.
Enslaved people in Raleigh died young.
Of the 30 stone markers where birth and death dates are listed or
otherwise known, the average age of death was about 29. That’s taking
into account Nancy Kenedy, who died in 1858 at 85, and Jane Dickerson,
who passed in 1844 at 90. It also includes five babies who were one or
younger when they died.
Thurman says that Caroline Stronach, who died at 29, was either the
wife or sister of Columbus Stronach, a stonemason who was likely
enslaved by and an apprentice to William Stronach, who owned a marble
yard across from the cemetery, and constructed many of the tombstones at
the location.
There are tombstones marking the remains of five people who died in
their teens. Thomas Weems was 16. So was John Scott. Martha Buffalo was
17. John Johnson, 16, died just days after President Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation. Anne Morgan died at 19, one year after
Emancipation. Little Albert Norwood was two when he died in 1857.
Harriet Bryan was born in 1799. “Sacred to the Memory of Harriet,”
reads her tombstone. “An Honest and Faithful domestic servant in the
family of John H. Bryan.”
Chaney Harris was beloved by her children. “The stone erected in
the memory of our mother, Chaney Harris, who departed this life on June
24, 1832,” reads her marker. Apparently, the enslaved mother’s children
were unsure of when she was born. She died “at an advanced age,” her
tombstone says.
Most prominent among the graves of the enslaved was Cato, who had an
obituary printed in the Raleigh Minerva newspaper owned by noted citizen
William Boylan, who is also buried in the City Cemetery.
Cato, a printer and bookbinder in Boylan’s downtown shop, was
enslaved by Boylan’s uncle. Cato died in 1811. RCCP member Betsy Shaw
discovered his obituary in the Minerva.
“It is one of the most remarkable pieces of history,” Thurman says.
“He was very well-liked and had a lot of interaction with the public.”
The tombstone of Anna Julia Haywood Cooper sits almost on the
invisible line that separates the enslaved from the free. That’s apt. Cooper was born a slave in 1858, and after Emancipation she went on to
become the first Black American woman to earn a Ph.D. in history from
the Sorbonne in Paris. She was a scholar, author, and early feminist,
praised by Frederick Douglass and a peer of W.E.B. Dubois. For African
American feminists, she is best known for asserting in 1892 that “only
the BLACK WOMAN can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed
dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special
patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.”
Thurman says that in this unique moment, these near-forgotten
monuments prompt her to reflect on “how we’re collecting history and
what we think of it.” She says she only recently learned about the Tulsa
race massacre because it wasn’t in her school history books.
“It’s time to face how we created a narrative and tell more stories,” she says.
Death and time are great equalizers. The remains of enslaved and
slaveholder alike are in the same cemetery. In a place that holds the
remains of the city’s founding fathers and state legislators, Juneteenth
was an opportunity to acknowledge those whose names will never be
known.
“It was a way to give them the dignity they did not receive in their lifetimes,” Winters says. “It’s way overdue.”
Follow Durham Reporter Thomasi McDonald on Twitter or send an email to tmcdonald@indyweek.com.
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