The "Colored Dead": African American Burying Grounds in a Confederate Stronghold

Summary

Some call Lexington, Virginia the place "where the South went to die": Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are buried there, along with countless Confederate soldiers. The extent to which the South truly expired is controversial, given for example the continuing, frequent presence of enthusiasts with gray uniforms and battle flags. How, in this context, have African Americans been memorialized? This paper considers marked and unmarked antebellum burials, Reconstruction-era graves, and African American burying grounds’ encounters with development. A young woman’s remains were found during municipal construction, for instance; other burials were moved for highway expansion, and the "colored dead" might or might not have been relocated before their cemetery became a neighborhood. Facing such structural inequalities and moves toward erasure, African Americans persisted in creating poignant memorial spaces – affirming their loved ones’ full humanity – through grave goods, votive objects, and grave makers’ symbols and epitaphs. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Reckoning: Landscapes and Legacies of Slavery   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 435