Righting Past Wrongs
Author(s): Charles Ewen
Year: 2020
Summary
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Prior to the Civil War both whites and free African-Americans were interred at Cedar Grove cemetery in New Bern, North Carolina. In 1914, the Jim Crow Era city fathers decided to remove 14 African American burials to the black cemetery three blocks away. A century later, a local reporter and a community activist joined forces to right the past wrong and return the burials to their original resting places at Cedar Grove. No one thought the 1914 move was a good idea, however, the community was divided on whether to move the graves yet again. Archaeologists at East Carolina University worked with elected officials and community leaders to assess the suspected reburial site and collect the data the city needed to make an informed decision. The results of the project were unexpected and brought to light the complexities of trying to do “the right thing”.
Cite this Record
Righting Past Wrongs. Charles Ewen. 2020 ( tDAR id: 457215)
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections
Keywords
General
African-American
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Cemetery
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Reburial
Geographic Keywords
United States of America
Temporal Keywords
19th-20th Centuries
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 105