Harvey Matthews remembers spending time in Moses Macedonia African Cemetery as a child growing up in the vibrant River Road community of Bethesda, Maryland.
Hundreds of formerly enslaved Black people and their descendants are believed to be buried in the cemetery. But as Matthews got older, he watched developers bulldoze the area, bury the cemetery under asphalt and turn it into a parking lot. In 1968, the neighboring high rise apartment building called Westwood Towers was completed.
“That’s your last final resting place and to have that uprooted, bulldozed, and this that and the other, it’s just crazy as hell to me," said Matthews, 80.
this is all cemeteries, btw.
very rarely do ppl get a plot of land forever.
As someone from the British countryside this is wild to me, my village has a graveyard thats been around since at least the 1500s and there are still graves there from that period, they just had to buy a new field and bless the land a few years ago because they ran out of space for new graves.
yah, it’s pretty fucked up on it’s own in the US. they’re most certainly trying to sell off some slave graves which is disgusting.
so… it’s not racebait the headline makes it out to be?
Great article.
