‘Black bodies are not for sale’: the battle over an African American cemetery

By Gloria Oladipo, The Guardian

For 63-year-old Nanette Hunter, the fight over the Moses Macedonia African cemetery in Bethesda, Maryland, is a personal one.

Hunter is a direct descendant of people interred in the Maryland cemetery, a burial site used for formerly enslaved people. The site itself is buried by an apartment complex and parking lot and is embroiled in a legal battle that could have national implications.

She said that speaking at a rally timed for a critical court hearing last Monday to try to stop further development was a matter of representing her ancestors and others who could not speak for themselves.

“That’s something that I think about each time that we’re in court,” Hunter said. “I’m not just speaking for myself,” she added.

More than 100 people, including Hunter, gathered on Monday at the Maryland supreme court in Annapolis, about 30 miles outside Washington DC to sit in on testimony in the case concerning the sale of Westwood Tower in Bethesda, the apartment complex and parking lot that covers the old cemetery that dates back to the 1910s.

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“We’ve come to the Maryland supreme court to emphatically state that Black bodies are not for sale,” the BACC president, Marsha Adebayo, said outside of the courthouse.

The coalition argues that the latest case could set a precedent for how property developers treat Black burial grounds – not just in Bethesda or Maryland but the entire US – especially amid a growing movement to preserve such sacred land.

The Guardian covers protestors’ pleas regarding such land developments.

There is a growing movement to save Black cemeteries.

More breaking Black news.