{"id":79136,"date":"2017-01-12T12:40:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T17:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/?p=79136"},"modified":"2017-01-12T12:40:53","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T17:40:53","slug":"the-significance-of-black-bodies-buried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/?p=79136","title":{"rendered":"The Significance of Black Bodies\u2014Buried"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
\u00a9Brian Palmer\/brianpalmer.photos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0 In my novel, <\/span>Provenance<\/span><\/i>, secrets are buried, and revealed, in Richmond, Virginia\u2019s Evergreen Cemetery. The same can be said for the cemetery itself. When slavery ended and African-Americans in the South could claim a final resting place, approximately 5,000 African-Americans chose Evergreen Cemetery. Now the two historic African-American cemeteries in Richmond, through neglect and civic indifference, lie under decades of overgrowth and underbrush. The same freedoms that made black cemeteries possible also became\u00a0reasons they turned into woodland\u2014families moved away, some migrated North establishing a home place away from the segregated south. In time, some folks forgot or just never knew the significance and the secrets buried along with black bodies during the early 20th century. However, through the efforts of some people in the 21st century, secrets long kept and compacts long hidden are being revealed. <\/span><\/p>\n

One of the diligent excavators of the secrets within Evergreen and East End Cemeteries\u00a0<\/span>is Brian Palmer, a photographer, writer and adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. I discovered Palmer\u2019s work while doing research for <\/span>Provenance<\/span><\/i>. Through his photographs, Palmer tells the story of people and situations that he knows might otherwise remain untold\u2014Evergreen and East End Cemeteries are such stories. In a recent <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i> opinion piece, Palmer uses his pen to illustrate and illuminate complicit\u00a0<\/span>compacts in states like Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi. These states award thousands of taxpayer dollars annually to preserve the burial sites and erect monuments for traitors and oppressors while ignoring American citizens who were oppressed. Read Palmer’s eloquent opinion piece, For the Forgotten African-American Dead<\/em><\/a>, where he calls on the Virginia General Assembly to pass House Bill 1547 and provide some taxpayer support to preserve historical graves and cemeteries of African-Americans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In The Significance of a Final Resting Place,<\/em><\/a> I wrote about Palmer’s work, the prominent African-Americans buried in Evergreen Cemetery and, how the historic site became a pivotal scene in my novel. You can see more of Palmer’s work at\u00a0http:\/\/www.brianpalmer.photos\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

If you live in Virginia, contact your state legislative representative and insist that they vote for House Bill 1547. If you live in other states turning a blind eye and providing paltry or non-existent funding for African-American historic sites – speak up on behalf of history for all of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 In my novel, Provenance, secrets are buried, and revealed, in Richmond, Virginia\u2019s Evergreen Cemetery. The same can be said for the cemetery itself. When slavery ended and African-Americans in the South could claim a final resting place, approximately 5,000 African-Americans chose Evergreen Cemetery. Now the two historic African-American cemeteries in Richmond, through neglect and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[146,21],"tags":[188,186,160,156,189,187],"class_list":["post-79136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-african-american-history","category-social-change","tag-brian-palmer","tag-east-end-cemetery","tag-evergreen-cemetery","tag-richmond","tag-va-house-bill-1547","tag-virginia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79136"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79154,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79136\/revisions\/79154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}