By Andrea Roberts*

I spoke yesterday with Jeremy Nelloms, descendant of Nancy Bradshaw. Nancy Bradshaw was a former slave who attained an impressive 300 acres of land after emancipation located in today’s northeast Houston, Texas.  The land is located a few blocks off I-10 East. Her family still owns the land, and the historic African American Morning Star Baptist Church nearby “owns” the Bradshaw family cemetery. Like so many family cemeteries, churches have been trusted to preserve or protect these sacred spaces. Jeremy explained that since so many in the family have passed on recently, and most of the descendant are middle aged women, the great great great grandchildren have been left to fight their way through high weeds and cut through brush in the hot Texas sun, to see the few remaining headstones that date back to the mid-1800s.

Thursday, a flood of media attention came to the Bradshaw family. First  by Dennis Spellman:

A cemetery dating back to the 1800s, with the bodies of slaves and African-Americans who fought in wars and were denied a proper burial, is being bulldozed by heavy equipment, and the family who owns the land says they don’t even know who is responsible.

And here’s what made me call Dennis for Jeremy’s contact information:

Photo: Surveying the Damage at the Cemetery By Brandon De Hoyos, Credit: Dennis Spellman/NEWS92FM.com. 6-17-14

Jeremy Nelloms is heartbroken by what’s happened. “I don’t want to see my grandmother dug up out of the ground,” Nelloms said. “There’s no way. I’d die before I’d let that happen.”

And more coverage of the story was found here and here.

Many can’t fathom such a possibility. Their grandmother being dug up or a developer pouring concrete over them.

But this is much more common than you would imagine.

There are more than 50,000 cemeteries in Texas. Also consider, that there was a time when Texas had more than 500 Freedom Colonies or ex-slave settlements. Yes, 500. And every one of those communities had at least one cemetery if not more. Especially, if some were near plantations which had their own cemeteries as well. There were no perpetual care cemeteries and African American veterans of foreign wars weren’t buried in official veteran’s cemeteries until the Supreme Court Jones v. Mayer decision in 1968, which called for the desegregation of cemeteries which should have been covered under public accommodation statutes as far back as 1866.

African American burial happened via church, mutual aid society, and family cemeteries. For more on mutual aid society burial see this blog post on a Houston area mutual aid society cemetery. As African Americans left family land in rural areas during various migrations, fleeing from white terrorism, seeking employment in the Great Depression, after WWII, and TXs oil booms and busts, cemeteries remained, unattended, forgotten or simply bulldozed. Here’s another story in Crosby, Texas. And there are countless stories I have come across in my discussions with representatives from the Texas Historic Commission and other cemetery preservation advocates.

But when I spoke to Jeremy, I thought of what could be done immediately to address his real fears around his grandmother’s grave site. There is justice for Jeremy, and then there is the collective justice needed for so many ancestors buried in cemeteries forgotten, abandoned, ignored. But it is important to note that this is not a matter of descendants not caring. More often than not, they are not sure what to do, how to do it, or how to pay for what needs to be done. That is where the collective justice for our ancestors and protection of these “dead” assets comes into play.

But first, justice for Jeremy.

Let me offer you some of the information I offered Jeremy should you find yourself in a  similar situation. I also am happy to meet with you and your family or church to discuss more long term planning and strategies. Contact Me

Here are some important resources and tips if this is an immediate concern:

• If you are a planner, developer, or work for government and want to know how to handle unmarked graves read this. It has a cool section on dowsing, divining, or “witching” for hidden graves: http://www.thc.state.tx.us/unmarked-graves
• Let’s say you want to get your tribe/family organized to do something about your cemetery management problem. Check this information on starting a cemetery association out: http://www.txca.us/establishing-a-family-cemetery
• Here’s what you do if you think someone has destroyed or tread on your family’s holy ground: http://www.thc.state.tx.us/what-do-if-cemetery-threatened-or-destroyed
•  Apply for a Historic Designation. You can say a site is historic all day long, and no one will be forced to believe you. There really is an official process for putting an application together (something I have done). Check out the process here: http://www.thc.state.tx.us/preserve/projects-and-programs/cemetery-preservation/historic-texas-cemetery-designation
• Call advocates and experts. People do this stuff all the time. Check out Woodrow Jones of Project Respect ( I can refer you) to learn about documentation, maintenance and clean up.www.linkedin.com/pub/woodrow-w-jones-ii/10/8a3/551
• Here’s some ways to raise money: http://www.thc.state.tx.us/funding
• Communicate with your family. I know, sometime this is hard. Sometimes we don’t want to think about this or simply rely on our own individual policies at “proper” cemeteries. But this is a mistake. Get help, spiritual counseling, or a mediator to start the conversation or simply discuss it at your church anniversaries, homecomings, and family reunions this summer. I know one or two powerful sisters who can help you do this healing work.

Now for collective or African American justice….this is a bigger project.

Education is but one competent. Preserving these sacred spaces of African America is about finances, communication, and estate planning. These are collective and personal choices we must make as families, communities, and diaspora. The ramifications are far reaching. If I see yet another “cemeteries are interesting and isn’t this sad what happened to this Black cemetery” story I am going to scream! This is not a Metro or human interest story! This is about locating, honoring, and preserving social capital that can represent for many of us real capital if we are smart.

There’s a lot more tied up in cemeteries than sentimentality, folk tales, or Halloween amusement. Cemeteries matter.

• Cemeteries are the last remnants of communities African Americans once controlled, maintained and even thrived within since emancipation.
• Cemeteries are holy places that still hold the customs and traditions we were prohibited from practicing during enslavement.  
• Cemeteries are created and often maintained by lodges, ex-slave societies, cooperatives, and mutual aid groups  that were grassroots and often working class representations of Black leadership lost from official history.
• Cemeteries are a portal to our complicated, transgressive, honorable, assimilationist, and intangible past. Cemeteries hold our memories. Cemeteries sometimes are all that is left. All. That. Is. Left.

They are a tangible connection to other dead assets or capital, like land we don’t know we own or towns we once controlled. Cemeteries and family land are only dead, because they stay in our minds and unshared memories. To the public, they are represented in County records, as dead or zombie plots of land awaiting capture by opportunistic developers. This is not a new issue. Such land takings were once more obvious and brutal.

For example, we know the story of Black Wall Street in Oklahoma and  Rosewood in Florida, but have you heard of Bull Run Community, Texas near jasper or Weeping Mary settlement. No. You haven’t. There are so many towns in Texas destroyed by arson, the Klan, trickery, or outright terrorism from neighboring whites. Sometimes the cemetery is the last proof that your ancestors ever laid claim to the land in rural and suburban Texas. We have to realize what’s really at stake when a cemetery is bulldozed, destroyed, or a master planned community is built atop these sacred grounds.

Reparations needn’t begin in congress or the pages of a magazine,

 it can begin with you!

Spiritual repair, monetary repair, so much of these dead assets an bring much life to our families, African America, and the Diaspora.  So what can be done on this larger scale? I have three recommendations:

1. Put this on national agendas of African American organizations. This include the Urban League and NAACP. We are talking about justice but we are also talking about a new approach to asset accumulation and preservation. We also need a strong  infrastructure for fundraising and legislative advocacy. We need foundations and think tanks to invest in research and position papers on why this issue matters.
2. We need faith based groups, baptist Associations, Mission Boards, to take this on as a ministry.  Set aside money for a new type of building fund dedicated to maintenance of these cemeteries.
3. Call on the national Association of Black MBAs and Accountants to assist with setting up a national trust and foundation. Such a foundation could assist with funding maintenance of cemeteries and also adjacent family land in these historic Black communities.

All the organizations mentioned are needed to develop a leadership coalition to pull together a comprehensive funding and strategic plan for Black Cemetery preservation and family land. I can raise awareness share information. 

Ask yourself, what can you do to help your family, your community, or the Jeremies around the state and the Country preserving what’s left of their family’s legacy.

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About Andrea Roberts

Andrea Roberts is a Community Heritage and Development consultant, advocate, writer, and a Sustainable Cities Doctoral Initiative Fellow in the Community & Regional Planning and Historic Preservative Programs at the University of Texas-Austin. Her research and consulting work helps her clients develop innovative approaches to addressing social and economic injustices related to development, governance, and cultural preservation in marginalized places by teaching people to change social capital (family history/cultural heritage) into community capital. Most recently, Andrea served as Project Manager for The Fifth Street Project, a community-based planning and market study initiative in a low income, unincorporated area in Ft. Bend County, Texas. Using a participatory, grass-roots approach, the Project created a community culture-based marketing report and strategy for a low-income community in a Houston suburb. She is presently a City of Austin Historic Landmark Commissioner. 

 Andrea is currently accepting consulting clients, and also provides community and educational presentations and  workshop facilitation. She welcomes respectful fees for service, but also accepts donations, honorariums, love offerings, and take home plates after church services. For more on her work see: www.linkedin.com/in/andrearoberts/ . Contact her at aroberts318@netzero.net or roberta318@gmail.com.