How the North lost their memory of slavery and how archaeology can shed light on forgotten histories

Summary

I will present evidence from the Portsmouth African Burial Ground, as well as two other burial grounds where we found unmarked burials of persons of African descent. I will be speaking about the invisibility of certain groups of people, and how the marginalized have no one to maintain an institutional memory a generation or two down the line, which is how the burials became forgotten and unmarked in modern times. Portsmouth was not only the site of a segregated burial ground but the City to which Ona Judge Staines escaped from servitude to Martha Washington. She lived in nearby Greenland with a free black family, and her burial ground is protected on a private woodlot.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• ‘Black Yankees’ and the African Diaspora: Contemporary Perspectives on the Archaeology of African Americans in New England

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-37,01