Ignored African American Cemetary Gets New Caretakers

History slipping though our fingers. It is important to maintain these historical sites such as this 130 year old cemetery from disappearing forever.

AP Texas News
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4956651.html

July 10, 2007
Group takes charge of small ignored cemetery in Temple

By DESIREE JOHNSON Killeen Daily Herald

TEMPLE, Texas — For years the Seven Star Cemetery was ignored, unclaimed by anyone until a small group of people decided to take responsibility for a place that holds forgotten souls and lost history.

Bishop J.A. Tolbert, a pastor at Eagles Wings Ministries in Temple, has been working with the Central Texas Juneteenth Committee to save the narrow stretch of land that lies along 14th Street.

Before he began, the plot of land was overgrown with tall grass, abandoned for years. Now cut and clean, the Seven Star Cemetery showcases graves that whisper stories from history that otherwise would have been lost.

Getting to this point has been a struggle for Tolbert and the Juneteenth Committee. First, the group needed to figure out who owned the property, a question that remains unanswered.

"The Hillcrest Cemetery had all the information on the land and a map of the graves and everything, but they refused to claim it," Tolbert said. "We think it was once owned by the Mississippi/Kansas/Texas railroad commission, but they've given it up, too. The city of Temple didn't want it either."

Tolbert has not been able to find the deed to the land.

Since no one was willing to claim the land, the Juneteenth committee decided to seek legal ownership.

"It's been a real struggle. The city has said it's ours, but we really want a paper trail," Tolbert said. "The city is hesitant to give it to a volunteer group because of a lack of permanency. They want the land linked through a committee that has no chance of going away."

After getting unofficial rights to the land, the group volunteered its time to cleaning up the area, repainting old graves and figuring out where old grave markers belonged.

"We needed a lot of help clearing out the grass and brush that we had cut down, and we requested some equipment from the city for help," Tolbert said. "The city refused to pick up debris because they said there was no water meter on the property.

"Of course, once we finished everything, everyone wanted to be there. The mayor, City Council members all sorts of important people were here at the unveiling of the new memorabilia marker."

While cleaning up, the committee discovered many untold stories that came with the cemetery.

Among the distinguishable graves lie multiple rows of unknown graves, each marked with a cement block. Because of the dates on the graves surrounding these — the oldest having a birth date of 1870 — the group can make educated guesses about the history behind the unmarked graves.

Because Texas slaves weren't freed by the Emancipation Proclamation because of the slow rate of news travel until around 1865, it's safe to assume that some of the unmarked graves were former slaves, Tolbert said.

Some of the unknown graves also are assumed to be former railroad workers, since that stretch of railroad would have been laid down around the same time as some of the corresponding marked graves.

"African-American slaves and African-Americans were buried next to railroad tracks before they could be buried in cemeteries," Tolbert said.

The marked graves have their own stories to tell.

"There are a few family plots that have children buried close by. Most children died because people back then didn't know about diets, diseases, et cetera," Tolbert said. "The children who survived had to be physically strong.

"The houses had no proper ventilation, too. They were built to keep the cold out, but what they didn't realize was that they were keeping the bacteria in."

One of the graves that stands out to passers-by is that of a black soldier.

"It's surprising because black soldiers were not awarded the same honors as white soldiers back then — it was not important that they died," Tolbert said. "This soldier must have done something truly amazing to have his body sent back home. There are so few black heroes of war simply because their stories are not recorded."

Since most of the bodies buried were either slaves or direct descendants of slaves having their first taste of freedom, the cemetery has become a testament to the black struggle for freedom in America.

"It's different for us today because we were born free, and we'll fight for that freedom, but back then slavery is just how they saw themselves," Tolbert said. "God must have put the desire to be free and the idea into their minds, since the entire world was telling them they were slaves, and they had to fight for it.

"It's like the quote from revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata that said, 'I would rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.'"

This is part of the reason the land is named Seven Star Cemetery.

"The star stands for the seven points of freedom on the Underground Railroad," Tolbert said. "The North Star was the principle star, and we think the last star stands for the ultimate freedom. When slaves would travel on the Underground, they at least knew what direction to go next, based on the placement of the constellations."

While the Seven Star Cemetery holds a plethora of information waiting to be discovered, the struggle for the respect of the piece of land is ongoing for the Juneteenth committee.

Each time Tolbert tours the area, he said something is out of place, and the cemetery has been vandalized many times.

"Sometimes, kids come by and move some of the old tin markers with important information on them to the unknown graves," Tolbert said. "We had to paint the name of the cemetery on the bricks because people kept coming by and tearing off the plastic ones we put up."

Despite the struggle, the importance of preserving history and the need to respect the bodies that lie there keep those dedicated to the cemetery working on the project.

"At the dedication, we had a flag donated to us that flew on the State Capitol and another that flew on the U.S. Capitol on Juneteenth (June 19)," Tolbert said.

"Having those is a way to bring these souls to a place I'm sure they never thought they would come. We're saying to them, 'We deem you citizens, you are no longer cattle.'

"It's more than just reclaiming the land and cutting the grass. Our history is inexorably tied to our present. If we don't know the yesterday, how are we going to find tomorrow?"

Essence: The Assault on Black Women

A very good article in this month's Essence Magazine by Michael Eric Dyson. It seems that even today Black women still suffer from the vestiges of slavery by negative stereotyping.

BULL'S-EYE
Michael Eric Dyson.

Long before Don Imus's callous attack on Rutgers University's female basketball players, calling them "nappy-headed hos," Black women's flesh was the court on which the nation played out its sexual, racial and gender anxieties. During slavery, Black women were either the oversexed Jezebel or the asexual and nurturing Mammy. Since that time, a few more stereotypes have been thrown into the mix: the smothering Black Matriarch, the lazy Welfare Queen and the conniving Baby Mama.

Imus isn't the first to use Black women negatively to get a laugh or appeal to conservative factions. Last year, radio host Neal Boortz said that Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney looked like "a ghetto slut" because her hair resembled "an explosion in a Brillo pad factory," conjuring the image of "Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence." And in 2006, the Republican group America's PAC ran an anti-Democratic-Party ad aimed at Black voters that seemingly portrayed certain Black women as promiscuous bimbos of misogynist men. "If you make a little mistake with one of your hos, you'll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked," a Black man says in the ad. "That's too cold. I don't snuff my own seed," a second Black man replies. "Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican," the first man says.

While Black women's images have been assaulted by outside forces, perhaps the biggest blow of all is the swollen stream of insult that flows from the mouths of Black men. When Bill Cosby went off on the Black poor in 2004, Black women were the scapegoats for his bigoted tirade: "Five or six children, same woman.... Pretty soon you're going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you're making love to You don't know who this is; might be your grandmother."

Hip-hop's hateful harangues also come painfully to mind. Young Black males have invented cruelly ingenious ways to call women out of their names: hood rat, chickenhead, skeezer. Hip-hop has also vigorously adopted a decades-old practice of slanderbonics--the ebonicized expression of insult that condenses words like "whore" into "ho," or expands "bitch" into "beyaatch."

Why are Black women such easy targets of assault from all quarters of the culture? A large part of the answer is that they're among the most vulnerable citizens in the nation. Many possess little social standing and warrant little positive notice from politicians and public policy makers. Sure, greater numbers of Black women than ever before are steadily climbing the economic ladder into better careers with higher pay. But millions of their sisters lag behind in economic misery, with stagnant jobs, poor education and even poorer health.

These sisters, for better and worse, are the face of Black women to a nation that is only too willing to stereotype them as lazy and undeserving of social support and political care. The constant stream of conservative commentary that damns Black women as welfare recipients who drain taxpayer dollars--combined with rap rhetoric that paints poor Black women as heartless gold diggers--makes it quite easy for powerful Black and White men to feel justified in attacking them.

Even rich and powerful Black women aren't exempt from assault, often from international sources. Condoleezza Rice was called "girl" by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who insinuated that Rice's opposition to him grew from sexual frustration. "It appears she's dreaming of me," Chavez reportedly said. "I could invite her on a date to see what happens between us."

Because most Black women are socially unprotected, there is hardly any penalty for insulting them. Imus's case may be the exception to the rule. While Black women and their allies waged a valiant struggle to remove Imus from the air after his senseless diatribe, it may have been the confluence of big business (several major sponsors pulled the plug on both his radio and television shows), the social outrage of Black employees at MSNBC and CBS, and social protest by Black journalists, leaders and intellectuals that ended Imus's free ride as an occasional bully and bigot. Before Imus, very few figures faced sanctions for verbally beating up on Black women.

After Imus, there is potential for change if we avoid simplistic reasoning and easy targets. We've got to take the profit out of bigotry toward women. That's far more difficult than banning "bitch" and "ho" from the airwaves or from rapper's vocabularies. It means confronting the sexism and misogyny that make the culture sick. That also means we have to stop making a scapegoat of hip-hop while ignoring an elephant in the Black cultural room: the Black church. If a Black woman is told by her clergyman that she is a second-class citizen because God and the Bible want it that way, is it any less offensive than a rapper hurling an epithet? Leading marches against record companies will matter little if Black leaders don't also march against pastors who preach the subordination of women to men.

When we have the courage to confront our most cherished institutions and deeply entrenched prejudices, we will make the world better for Black women to live in. If we change the culture that reinforces the logic and supplies the benefit of sexism, we can alter the future of little girls and boys who we want to grow up as female-affirming and self-loving creatures.

GRAPHIC: Picture 1, The Rutgers Women's basketball team found themselves in the crosshairs of an ugly battle. RUTGERS TEAM, CHRIS HONDROS/GETTY IMAGE NEWS.
Picture 2, Don Imus. IMUS, CHIP EAST/REUTERS/CORBIS.
Picture 3, Bill Cosby has lashed out at poor women. COSBY, AP PHOTO/ALEX BRANDON.
Picture 4, Al Sharpton speaks to the media about Imus's remarks. SHARPTON, CHRIS HONDROS/GETTY IMAGES NEWS.
Picture 5, Hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons has responded to criticism of record lyrics. SIMMONS, ARNOLD TURNER/WIREIMAGE.