Fort Ward’s Lost Graves: Who Speaks for the Dead?
“The central point seems to me to be the City's default on historical responsibility, as shown in the terrible callousness of converting an African-American gravesite into a maintenance yard and covering graves with mulch or paving material. It's quite simply an act of desecration. Judith Smith's testimony at the last hearing, when she spoke of being "heartbroken" by seeing the destruction of the grave sites of her relatives where she used to play as a child, was very powerful. I'd like to find a temperate way to make the point that the best way to undo the desecration is for the City to develop a clear-headed, action-oriented, and adequately funded plan for treating the site with the respect befitting a cemetery and African-American history”.
Memo from Dennis Carroll, a homeowner who lives adjacent to Fort Ward Park, to J. Glenn Eugster. March 23, 2009.
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