Forgotten cemetery gets cleanup as centuries-old Maryland church reckons with its history of slavery

A small church cemetery in Bowie, Maryland, which was hidden from historical past as a result of years of neglect, has been revealed, and within the course of illuminated a darkish a part of America’s historical past of slavery.

The restoration of the cemetery behind Sacred Coronary heart Chapel has been the results of a significant undertaking by volunteers, parishioners and descendants of these buried.

Within the 1700s, the Jesuits based a church and a plantation on the web site, the place they stored enslaved folks, together with Kevin Porter’s ancestors.

“That is the place they lived, that is the place they got here to commune after pause laboring all day,” Porter informed CBS Information.

Because the Catholic church acknowledges this horror of its previous, in November, the Archdiocese of Washington introduced in an anthropologist to map and doc doable gravesites in an overgrown space subsequent to an current cemetery close to the church.  

As volunteers – together with church members and a few seventh and eighth technology descendants – swept, raked and blew away years of particles, they found centuries-old stones, grave markers and indications of burials.   

“It is seemingly that tons of of persons are buried right here,” undertaking chief Dr. Laura Masur, an assistant professor of anthropology at Catholic College, stated.  

The undertaking employees marked seemingly graves with small flags and brushed up the seen stones. In keeping with the church, at the very least 180 potential graves have to this point been recognized utilizing ground-penetrating radar.

The church stated a committee of descendants, specialists and church leaders will ultimately decide the best way to mark and honor the cemetery.

“It is a part of the historical past, and it has been talked about, however must be talked about extra,” Rev. Michael Russo, Sacred Coronary heart’s parochial vicar, stated. “Different organizations and governments are in search of to do the identical. One in all them, the state of Maryland, has thought-about laws ordering a proper overview of burial locations by way of the state to find out the place cash is required to search out and protect burial grounds of historic significance to the enslaved African American expertise.”

Porter hopes to see a memorial on the location sooner or later.

“It is necessary that we uncover them, honor them,” Porter stated. “This web site is necessary to our household. It is necessary to American historical past. I feel we’d like memorials telling these tales.”