Segregated Black Burial Grounds in Antebellum Maryland as Places of Freedom and Protection

• In Event: Contesting the American Narrative: African American Burial Spaces, Death Material Culture and Public Memorial

Abstract

During the colonial and antebellum periods, borders erected between interment spaces were viewed as maintained solely by Whites. While there was truth in this, Blacks exercised agency in these borders. This paper illustrates how Blacks redefined, laid claim, and took ownership of their burial borders. Because of the brutalized violence and dehumanization enacted upon Blacks at the hands of Whites, Blacks knew that they must be separated from Whites in death because God would surely punish evil slave holders. Many knew that the devil would claim their slaveholder’s soul upon death and did not want to be too close in proximity for there to be a mix-up. This is made explicitly clear through surviving slave narratives where freed men and women were allowed to recount their experiences which inevitably included descriptions of the slaveholder and slave mistress. Detailed in numerous slave narratives where Blacks were enslaved – Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Mississippi, and North Carolina – they told how continuous whippings, constant cursing, religious hypocrisy, even decomposing bodies which littered portions of the plantation were clear examples of spiritual contamination. Further still, Blacks maintained this barrier in death because it provided them freedom from slavery and helped them assert their burial rights. Ultimately, the purpose of this paper is to interrogate the separation of colonial and antebellum burial grounds where people of colour were interred. Asking why this separation was maintained by specifically discussing the separated burial spaces of Whites and Blacks during the colonial and antebellum eras will uncover the social, racial, and spiritual implications of the border.

Author

• Kami LaShae Fletcher, Delaware State University