Picture: Gail Rebhan, used with permission.

The desecration of the Moses African Cemetery and different African burial grounds in Montgomery County, Maryland has been an ongoing crime for no less than the previous century. Six years in the past, a wrestle started on River Highway in Montgomery County, Maryland towards two businesses: the Maryland Nationwide Capital Parks and Planning Fee and the Housing Alternatives Fee. The businesses deliberate to promote the land of Moses African Cemetery, a website the place tons of of African and African American ancestors had been laid to relaxation, to builders. This information spurred the social justice ministry of Macedonia Baptist Church, a church throughout the road from the cemetery, to create the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition. The Coalition is a multi-ethnic, multi-national, and multi-generational group dedicated to defending the ancestors from additional desecration. 

For years, BACC has labored tirelessly to uncover the historical past of River Highway and to coach the encompassing neighborhood via public training campaigns and occasions held on the cemetery. The Coalition printed a ebook on the cemetery with a second ebook slated to be launched later this 12 months. They constructed a cell exhibit to convey to totally different neighborhood occasions within the county, with an enormous exhibit deliberate at American College’s Katzen Arts Heart in June of this 12 months. By way of years of direct and authorized motion, they’ve succeeded at stopping the development of a storage unit facility on the cemetery, blocked the cemetery from being bought to a few totally different enterprise capitalists and captured proof of grave looting, desecration and hate crimes which have occurred on the positioning. 

The Coalition plans to proceed combating till the land is returned to the church, making certain that the graves are by no means disturbed once more. They’re additionally demanding that each single individual chargeable for the desecration be held accountable to the fullest extent of the regulation. 

In response to Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, the president of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition, “Desecration is a violent, political, cultural and religious act, perpetuated by these holding political and financial energy dedicated to erasing the legacy, significance, historical past and ancestry of the oppressed so as to dominate and maintain hegemonic energy. The objective of desecration is to launder and plunder sacred land so as to switch wealth from susceptible teams to the landowning aristocracy.”

The untold historical past of River Highway

River Highway, or Maryland Route 190, runs about 17 miles alongside the Potomac River in Maryland and Washington, D.C. The highway runs principally via rural and suburban areas in Montgomery County however ends within the city space of Bethesda, Maryland. Like most of the counties adjoining to D.C., Montgomery County is among the richest within the nation. 

The historical past of the African neighborhood on River Highway in Bethesda dates again to the seventeenth and 18th centuries when human traffickers first started kidnapping human beings from superior civilizations in Western and Central Africa to be compelled to labor on plantations of rich white landowners. Not solely did European colonizers enslave and torture these Africans, however the landowners additionally realized an excellent deal about pure medication, hydrology, agriculture and political group by forcing those that had been enslaved to cross on this data. 

When tobacco crops wreaked havoc on the soil to the purpose the place it grew to become unusable, some plantation homeowners started to transition their enterprise mannequin to “breeding packages,” the place they compelled younger ladies to be raped and provides start to extra human beings who could possibly be bought, traded and compelled to work. Many of those ladies died throughout childbirth. In the event that they didn’t die, they had been bought to cotton plantations within the South and infrequently had been raped once more alongside the journey.  Proof of the compelled birthings and mass graves on River Highway comes from plantation data that present a disproportionate variety of younger ladies — and their early deaths — within the space within the 1800s. 

Starting within the 1850s, freed Africans had been permitted to settle solely within the space of River Highway the place the slave barracks and mass graves had been situated. After Emancipation, a “coloured faculty” was established for the various African households who had settled within the space. Black households who owned land within the space donated a few of their land to the varsity. In 1954, after the Brown v. Board of Training resolution desegregated colleges, the varsity was closed and the county gave the land to white households. 

The Maryland Nationwide Capital Park and Planning Fee, or MN-CPPC, has overseen a lot of the racist switch of land from Black folks within the state. The division was based in 1927 with nice encouragement from white supremacist politician and developer, Col. Edward Clark Lee, who was practiced in utilizing racially restrictive covenants in his suburban growth. 

By the mid-twentieth century, MN-CPPC started to develop the land the place the River Highway neighborhood resided utilizing violent and racist ways. They rezoned the world the place Black households lived as industrial employees, implementing industrial laws to kick the households out of residential areas. They coerced owners with alcohol and advised them they needed to promote their houses for underneath the market worth. In the event that they didn’t, the houses can be condemned, they usually must transfer anyway. The Ku Klux Klan started campaigns of terror within the space, using via Black neighborhoods at evening and setting fireplace to houses. One of many Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition’s members, Harvey Matthews, recounts having to huddle along with his household in darkness through the KKK’s “Black Out” nights. 

The wrestle continues

At present, the one seen remnant of the African American neighborhood on River Highway is the Macedonia Baptist Church. Under the soil are tons of, presumably hundreds, of graves interring the stays of Africans and African People. These ancestors have been denied a correct relaxation as a result of continued desecration of the land within the twenty first century. Moreover, their descendants have been denied the correct to steward the sacred resting place. 

BACC has constructed an uncompromising and arranged motion for Black ancestors that has shaken up Montgomery County, one of many richest counties within the nation, for the primary time in latest historical past. In the summertime of 2020, organizers from the Coalition blocked development vehicles exterior of Moses three days per week to stop any development on the cemetery. Groups of photographers and videographers from the Coalition watched the cemetery for days on finish to ensure that all disturbances by development crews had been documented. Photographs of development employees carrying potential funerary bottles to the automotive are just one instance in a collection of egregious photos the staff captured. When large vehicles started carrying large piles of the cemetery to an unmarked plot of land to what organizers describe as “the center of nowhere,” the staff adopted the vehicles and rummaged via the dust till the ancestors had been steamed over and crushed by machines. In simply thirty minutes they discovered numerous hairpicks, funerary ceramics, and bone fragments. Regardless of presenting an abundance of proof by BACC to native authorities leaders, each political events in Montgomery County have turned their backs on the descendent neighborhood.

Organizers are placing stress on Democrat and self-proclaimed “progressive” County Govt Marc Elrich, who, throughout his election, assured the Coalition peace and the tip of the racist desecration. Nonetheless, as Elrich has himself admitted, he by no means had real plans to battle for Moses Cemetary to be returned to the descendent neighborhood. As a substitute, Elrich now claims there’s nothing he can do in regards to the desecration. Organizers are calling for Elrich to invoke eminent area on the a part of the cemetery owned by a personal firm. Concerning the portion of the cemetery owned by the Housing Alternatives Fee and Parks and Planning, organizers are calling for Elrich to strip funding from these Jim-Crow period departments till they return the cemetery to its rightful homeowners. 

The battle for Moses Cemetery will not be a singular one. Cemetery organizations from throughout the nation have reached out to the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition to indicate solidarity and spotlight their very own struggles to protect and declare their sacred burial grounds. 

On the coronary heart of this difficulty, BACC says, is land. Montgomery County, since its creation, has labored to make sure Black folks don’t personal land and subsequently don’t have energy. Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo says, “When you’ve got land, you might have wealth. In a capitalist system, wealth means energy.”

Readers can discover extra data on the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition’s web site.