Remarks by Adrienne Terrell (Randall) Washington
at the February 27, 2012 Agenda Alexandria Forum on
“Alexandria's African American Civil War History: Monuments, Burial Sites and More”
Good evening. I am Adrienne Terrell (Randall) Washington, director of the Ft. Ward and Seminary African American Descendants Society, the Ft. Ward Park & Museum Advisory Group, the Ft. Ward History Work Group, the Seminary Civic Association, and I wish to thank the members of Agenda Alexandria for inviting me to represent the descendants at this meeting to talk about this important subject.
All too often the African American perspective is left out of the debate and discourse about American history, particularly when it comes to, their participation in the Civil War and Reconstruction, as indeed our ancestors fought for their own freedom as soldiers, Union spies and contraband servants, and how their free or forced labor was critical to the growth and prosperity of this country well into the 20th Century. That omission, intentional or not, is why our private/public collaborative efforts at Ft. Ward for the past three years have been so important -- we are determined to rectify the wrong, get the record straight and set the story right for future generations.
Our history is a living legacy, there are not just names and dates of the deceased on those tombstones, we know the people and their stories because they have been passed down and still live in us. Stories, for example, of the Johnson brothers who drown in the Potomac River and had a colored swimming pool named after them when blacks could not go to the whites-only pools.
As descendants, we feel it is our ultimate responsibility to make sure that our ancestors, who worked the land, lived on the land and are buried in marked and unmarked graves throughout the 50 acres of soil at Ft. Ward, are not forgotten. Many of those graves faced further desecration had we, the descendants and members of the Oakland Baptist Church, not joined forces with the residents of the adjacent Marlboro Estates and the Seminary Hill communities to work with city agencies and elected officials to get funding and technical assistance to start rectifying pressing problems, including rescuing graves as well as abating the storm water runoff and soil erosion that continues to threaten those graves, known and unknown, in the park. While we are still ironing out inherent differences, our project is an example of how solutions can come out of city efforts to listen and work WITH citizens, not supposedly FOR, or AROUND them.
“The Fort” which includes the old cemeteries, the site of homes, an old school and church, is sacred ground to us.
My maternal bloodline includes at least two people, one Rachel Terrill, buried in the Contraband Cemetery, as well as, several, including my great-grandparents, William and Burney Terrell, who are buried in the Oakland Baptist Church Cemetery, which is the only privately-owned lot still within the 50 acres of Ft. Ward Park today.
BTW, William and Burney Terrell operated a small general store on property they passed on to my grandparents, Jacob and Beatrice Terrell, which was located at 3330 King Street, the current address of TC Williams High School. Beatrice, “Miss Bea,” who taught in the one room Seminary School, was the granddaughter of USCT James Montgomery Peters, whose initialed musket is in the Manassas National Historical Park Museum near his homestead. His son, John, married Ella Ashby, and they owned a home and sold pigs on Ft. Ward property adjacent to what is now St. Stephens and St. Agnes School.
Like many in the Fort and Seminary communities, John Peters worked at the Virginia Theological Seminary and Episcopal High, with the Wanzers, the Adams, the Johnsons, the Caseys, the Cravens, the Jacksons, and my paternal grandfather, Leaner Randall and his others. The descendants of these men and women are buried in Ft. Ward, but their markers have disappeared or are severely compromised . Each of these families has a compelling story which the descendants are working to recapture with an oral history project this year to compliment the genealogy, census and tax records being collected by the Office of Historic Alexandria to piece together the story of a community from which newly freed slaves voted as early as the 1867 election in Alexandria.
I don’t know if you are aware of just how important Alexandria is to African American history, and we aim to add the Fort’s West End experience to that rich history which has been recorded in the downtown areas.
And while we’re correcting revisionist history, Disney got it wrong in “Remember the Titans;”, white Alexandrians did not protest and picket and shout epithats at blacks when blacks , including my classmate, William Euille and I, first entered the school doors.
And, Hollywood missed the real story. The story of a hard-working, self-sufficient African Americans who built schools, churches, homes and a community at what was called “The Fort” and “Seminary” and which still exists more than 150 years later. Yes, as Frances Terrell often says “We’re Still Here.”
Indeed, the African Americans who were buried in the Contraband Cemetery, many of them related to those in our descendants society, did not make it to freedom after the Civil War, but some of those buried in Oakland’s “Fort” cemetery and throughout the park, as evidence and oral history suggests, not only survived the Civil War, they thrived through Jim Crow and government policies that constantly threatened their land holdings, community institutions and gravesites.
If you are interested in knowing more about the Fort Ward & Seminary African American Descendants whose family members are buried in the historic park, our Society has a Facebook page, regular meetings, make contributions to the Ft. Ward Observer and are planning a commemoration day in the park on June 2, 2012. For further information on the Society and our activities go to:
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Thank you!
