It is Tuesday and time to write a 'Slice of Life."
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We are having an amazing trip to the beach, here in Hilton Head, South Carolina, enjoying long walks on the beach and easy bike rides along the leisure trails. Everything is so picture perfect.
Until I look a little closer.
Along the ocean’s bend a cemetery surrounded by condos and a golf course. Let me say that again. A weathered old cemetery loved ones buried before the Civil War now consumed by covered by no, smothered by real estate money making vacation homes and fairways. A handful of headstones. An historical marker: Braddock Point Cemetery A Gullah cemetery.
Here’s a quote from that same website:
Located in Harbour Town, this small cemetery is the final resting place of the Chisolm and Williams families, descendants of enslaved West Africans who toiled on Braddock’s Point Plantation.
https://www.hiltonhead.com/sacred-cemeteries-in-sea-pines/
To see this juxtaposition, these solemn graves with the commercial giddy vibrance of everything else in sight, I can’t find the right words. I am absolutely appalled.
Please tell me how this came to be. Who signed off on this development? How is this not a high crime by some public official? A white collar crime by developers? Was anyone arrested for such disrespect? Around what conference table did the soulless make the decision to build here, exactly here?
Did ANYONE protest? Was it even debated? Did ANYONE speak up and say “I don’t think this is a good idea.”?
Truly, a sickening image of capitalism, of white supremacy, of I will do what I want to do, and you and your loved ones do not matter at all.
The cemetery continues to be maintained by descendents of the buried. This feels beautiful and right to me. Of course, the descendents had to fight for this privilege. They had to fight for the historical marker. They had to fight for the right to continue coming to this now gated part of the island to tend to the graves, to pray and remember. I wonder if they have to pay the $9 entrance fee at the gate, each time they visit?
We’ll be learning more about Gullah history on the island in the days to come. According to my initial research, over 100 people were buried here; less than 40 gravesites remain.
Here’s a 2023 article from the New York Times about Black cemeteries and the quest to preserve them, with this quote:
Washington provides little help. Late last year, Congress passed the African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act, which authorized $3 million for competitive grants to identify, research and preserve Black cemeteries. Congress has yet to appropriate even that.
New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/black-cemeteries.html
condos swallow slave graves body soul spirit cannot be erased families hold in loving homage
Thank you for visiting my blog. Clicking the title of any post will open a comment box at the bottom of the page. I love hearing from you.
So sad that this small cemetery is hidden away from the families that need and want to be close to lost family members. I have read a little about the Gullah history but need to learn more. Thanks for posting this.
It is very sad. I am obviously still processing. Thanks, Joanne.
Thank you for this post I will read more about Gullah history. People with wealth and power get what they want. This happens everywhere.
True, people with wealth and power get what they want. I am just horrified by the lack of respect for humanity. They say you can tell a lot about a society by the way the dead are treated. Thank you for commenting.
Wow. That does seem to be an egregious zoning issue. Thanks for recognizing and investigating it. I’m with you in wondering how the family is treated.
It feels so wrong to me, that we would sell land for development where folks are buried. Thank you for commenting.
Thank you for writing about your discovery and then following up with further research. Capitalism and white supremacy tend to work in each others’ favor. The example you cite is a clear one bearing out the relationship. I’m afraid that Lakshmi is correct that the wealthy and powerful are accustomed to getting their way.
It doesn’t have to be this way, I think. (Naively?) There is plenty of money to be made without disrupting graves.
Maureen, are you at Baynard Ruins? So much has changed since I was there, and I wondered how long it would be until the developers started building up around these graves. It is sad indeed.
Maureen, thanks for sharing this wealth of information. It’s amazing what can happen when someone thinks they must build in a particular area. Sometimes an historical marker, etc. is the only thing to stop the onslaught. I loved the emphasis in your poem expressing how the cemetery is being consumed! It is appalling that the descendants had to fight for their right to maintain the graves. Yikes!
Maureen, it is a wonder that any graves remain to acknowledge, with all the development nearly overtaking them… surely a sign that some developer knows that a burial ground is sacred, right? Yet…where are the remaining 60-ish people resting…? How terribly sad for the descendants who maintain the cemetery and who are honoring their heritage, keeping the history alive… that paragraph questioning whether they had to pay to enter the now-gated community struck deep. As does your beautiful poem…
Wow, thank you for this history lesson, Maureen. That is crazy, and I think so much more after reading all those questions you ask, and your two poems. Powerful message. Thank you. Enjoy your history lessons.
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