Thank you for sharing your report. It illustrates how exhaustive and extensive your research has been. For me, the connection to both the River Road community and thereby the cemetery has brought about an investigation of sorts into how I am, who I am. — Geneva Nanette Hunter, September 2018

Over the past week I have emailed and delivered copies of the research that I conducted into the history and historical significance of the River Road Moses Cemetery. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the River Road Moses Cemetery is the final resting place for several hundred formerly enslaved and free people of African descent.

River Road Moses Cemetery site, Bethesda, Maryland.

The work initially was requested by the leadership of Macedonia Baptist Church and its activism partners operating as the “Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition.” At some point in August 2018, the church and its activism partners decided to pursue alternative research strategies in their efforts to preserve the site. Curiously, this so-called coalition never informed me about its decision. After almost a year of documentary research and oral history interviews, I completed the report and transmitted it to members of the descendant community, the District of Columbia Historic Preservation Office, and the Montgomery County Planning Department’s Historic Preservation Office.

The research traces the cemetery’s history and the history of the Montgomery County, Maryland, African American hamlet where it relocated in 1911 from Northwest Washington, D.C. Founded in 1880 by a local subordinate order of a national African American benevolent organization, gentrification and anti-Black land use policies displaced the Washington graveyard and ultimately the entire community where it was established. Half a century later, the same forces erased the River Road community.

The D.C.-Md. Black Borderlands.

Because much of the story takes place in what are now Washington’s Chevy Chase and Tenleytown neighborhoods, there is a substantial amount of research on African American suburbs (planned and unplanned communities) that emerged in these spaces starting in the early 19th century. Collectively, these communities in Washington and Maryland comprise an area I am calling the “DC-MD Black Borderlands.” I introduced this concept earlier this year in a talk hosted by the D.C. Public Library and I will be presenting it in a paper at this year’s D.C. History Conference.

A “lost” 19th century Washington African American cemetery was one of several unanticipated discoveries. The cemetery’s location has now been mapped by the District’s Historic Preservation Office. “Your research adds needed data to the available information on this community,” wrote District Archaeologist Ruth Trocolli.

1899 letter to the proprietors of the Hebbons Cemetery. Courtesy of the District of Columbia Office of the Surveyor.

In addition to the descendant community, I also provided copies of the report to three Bethesda historians whose work first documented the cemetery and the River Road community after Montgomery County embarked on rewriting the sector plan where they are located. I cannot thank them enough, along with the descendant community, and the many archivists in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia who assisted me in this research.

Want to read the report the report? Click the link below:

© 2018 D.S. Rotenstein

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