Research Artist: Veronica Davis "Here I Lay My Burdens Down"

Last Saturday I had the opportunity of meeting Veronica Davis, local historian and author of “Here I Lay My Burdens Down”. The book is a comprehensive history of black cemeteries in Richmond, VA. Davis’s research over the past several years has greatly impacted our understanding of these historic cemeteries. She gives two guided bus tours a year through the Valentine Museum History Center, and has played a key role in the conservation of the cemeteries she writes about. Her efforts have helped to raise awareness as well as much needed funds to help preserve and clean up the cemeteries. She has also been able to place accurate burial markers on some sites that were not marked correctly. Our first stop on the tour was Mt. Olivet inside Maury Cemetery, which is segregated into black, white and Muslim sections. Although the cemetery was founded in the 1870’s, it wasn’t officially segregated until an ordinance was passed in 1910, planting a Jim Crow wall between the burial plots of blacks and whites. The dividing wall did not come down until the 1970’s and as the author pointed out to our group you can still see the faint lines of where it once stood. The entire tour took three hours and covered four different burial grounds. Most of these sites share the same dilemma of broken headstones, uncared for plots and overgrown paths. When compared to somewhere like Hollywood cemetery their appearance is disgraceful. Richmond's black cemeteries also have been plagued with problems throughout the years that many white cemeteries don’t experience. Inadequate records due to theft, fire or lack of concern, as well as improper headstones or complete lack thereof are a few examples. In Colored Pauper’s cemetery which lies just outside of Evergreen not a single headstone was placed. The people buried here were too poor to afford a proper burial and as a result bodies sometimes resurfaced after periods of heavy rain. Most of these burial grounds have a disturbing history but the story that resonates with me the most is that of division 17 in Maury Cemetery. Here, at the edge of the property there is an open patch of field. This piece of land, which bears no headstone, is a mass grave which holds the bodies of over 1,300 slaves. There is no official marker, no plaque - just grass. Instead what Richmond has is a colossal monument to Robert E. Lee, a man who owned and exploited blacks and led the attack on abolitionist John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. This dedication to Lee stands in the center of our community and thousands of dollars were allocated by the Virginia state government last year just to clean it. Yet, in two different locations, within Richmond city limits, two mass graves of African slaves still have no official government markers. You can walk right onto this land and never know that a single drop of blood was ever shed there. And we wonder why in the year 2007 the rest of America still thinks we’re backwards.