Descendant Families and Community Leaders Wait for City Information on Gravestone Removals

Descendant Families and Community Leaders Wait for City Information on Gravestone Removals
J. Glenn Eugster
Fort Ward Observer.  September 9, 2014

Members of the Oakland Baptist Church, Seminary Civic Association and the Ft. Ward and Seminary African American Descendants Society, Inc. continue to wait for City of Alexandria leaders to provide additional information on the location of the graves of African American families within Fort Ward Park.  Despite numerous requests and providing city leaders with information city officials have been steadfast in their resistance to search for and locate graves using information available from current and former employees.

In 2009 while doing research on Fort Ward Park I learned that past and current city employees were directed by city leaders to move gravestones and other markers from African American burial sites within the park.  The park was once home to a community of African American families who purchased land and built homes after the Civil War and before the City of Alexandria’s urban renewal efforts.  

Land for Fort Ward was assembled by the City of Alexandria in the 1950’s and 1960’s at a time when integration was being resisted by public and private interests.  Once the land was acquired by the city the homes were demolished and lands cleared for recreation use.  In many ways urban renewal programs of that time period were intended to stimulate new economic development while eradicating any evidence of the people who lived in the area before the project.  The urban renewal project that led to Fort Ward Park seems to have had that dual objective.

Written documents and discussions with past and current city employees indicate that staff from Alexandria’s Recreation Department were directed to remove gravestones and markers and fill-in grave sites that had begun to subside.  Some of this work was done on the backside of the Fort while other work was done within and around the park’s maintenance yard.   Both areas are known to be places where residents lived and had family burial grounds.

I made a request to discuss this information with the Director’s of the Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities and the Office of HIstoric Alexandria but these leaders were unwilling to meet.  Written requests for information were politely and professionally resisted.  Copies of certain documents, including informal interviews, were provided to the Office of Historic Alexandria in the hopes that the staff would research the leads and use the information to provide a more factual basis for archaeological work to identify graves within the park.

After nearly five-years neither the Office of Historic Alexandria or the Recreation Department have been willing to secure information from their past and current employees despite the statements made by some of these workers, some of who have ben identified by city leaders and researchers, that they did cover graves and remove grave markers.   Making the information available for input into the draft management plan for Fort Ward Park would help to identify and protect those buried in the park.  It would also help bring closure to the descendant family members who have waited for more than 50 years for the leaders of the City of Alexandria to correct the mistakes of the past.