River Road Moses Cemetery report released

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River Road Moses Cemetery site, Bethesda, Maryland.

The results of research into the history of Bethesda, Maryland’s River Road Moses Cemetery are presented in this report first released to the dispersed descendant community and government agencies in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Now that all of the known stakeholders have a copy of the report, I am releasing it to the general public.

Some key findings presented in the report and deriving from the research:

  • The cemetery was never affiliated with the Macedonia Baptist Church. Though the Bethesda congregation has taken the lead on advocating for the cemetery and it is demanding that Montgomery County “give it back” to the congregation, the cemetery had little in common with the church beyond spatial proximity. Furthermore, in my attempts to get historical information from the church’s former pastor, he repeatedly attempted to dissuade me from writing about the church by asserting that the church and cemetery were never related. Throughout its entire history, the River Road Moses Cemetery appears to have been closely affiliated with Rock Creek Baptist Church, a congregation founded in 1872 in Washington’s Tenleytown neighborhood and which was displaced in the early 20th century.
  • The cemetery appears to have been active for a much more limited time (c. 1912-1935) than initially believed (1912-1958).
  • There are likely substantially fewer burials that activists claim. The one-acre tract could have accommodated as many as 800 to 1,000 burials, yet because of the population served and the limited time that the cemetery was active, it is likely that the number of people buried there is substantially less than the 500 claimed by Bethesda activists.
  • The cemetery remained a fully owned and operated satellite of a Washington-based benevolent organization. Though there are significant historical ties linking the cemetery to the River Road community, they were mainly because of spatial proximity and not necessarily because it was a “community cemetery.” As a result, it is likely that more Washington residents were buried in the cemetery than Montgomery County residents.
  • The cemetery and community’s history expose a pattern of anti-Black land use policies that created serial displacement in Northwest Washington in the first decade of the 20th century and which continued as displaced DC residents moved to River Road and were displaced between c. 1935 and 1960. The serial displacement throughline continues today with gentrification in the District and Montgomery County and with Montgomery County’s efforts to “retrofit” its suburbs.
  • The research identified a Washington cemetery (in Chevy Chase) that had been forgotten for more than a century (homes were built on top of it in the 1940s). As a result of my research, the DC Historic Preservation Office was able to map the cemetery’s location.
  • The research identified a previously unknown African American community in what is now Chevy Chase that was founded by free persons of color in the 1810s.
  • The report treats the heavily disturbed cemetery as a traditional cultural property and it contextualizes it among other similar African American cemeteries sealed beneath roads and parking lots as a Blacktop Burial Ground: a vernacular type of historic property that combines an earlier, disturbed African American cemetery with a twentieth century parking lot covering its surface.

When I transmitted the report to the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission, the agency that owns most of the site, I offered recommendations for pursuing historic preservation and for working with the descendant community.  Continue reading →

Housing Opportunities Commission Statement

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Today I delivered a copy of the River Road Moses Cemetery report to the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission and I entered this statement into the public record.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES COMMISSION
STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID ROTENSTEIN

October 3, 2018

Good afternoon. My name is David Rotenstein. I am a professional historian and ethnographer. I have a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and I have served on the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission and other bodies in my capacity as an expert in historic preservation. I also previously was certified as a Registered Professional Archaeologist.

I have transmitted to you today a copy of a report I prepared for the descendant community affiliated with the River Road Moses Cemetery. Copies of the report and a completed Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties form also were provided to members of the descendant community, the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Office, and the District of Columbia Historic Preservation Office.

The report, which contains the results of nearly a year of documentary and oral history research, finds that the River Road Moses Cemetery meets four of nine criteria for designation in the Montgomery County Master Plan for Historic Preservation. The report also finds that the River Road Moses Cemetery site appears to meet three out of four criteria for listing in the National Register of Historic Places as a traditional cultural property.

I am here today to urge the Housing Opportunities Commission to initiate designation proceedings under Chapter 24A of the Montgomery County Code. I also am recommending that the Commission, along with Mr. Harvey Matthews and other members of the dispersed descendant community in Montgomery County and Washington, as well as experts in African American history and folklife and other members of the community, form an advisory committee to determine the best stewardship for the site that also enables HOC to continue fulfilling its mission to provide affordable housing in Montgomery County.

Currently, advocacy for preservation of the cemetery site is vested with a small group of activists associated with Macedonia Baptist Church. That group does not reflect the breadth of the potential stakeholder population associated with a historic property located in Montgomery County, but which for all intents and purposes was a Washington, D.C., institution. Furthermore, based on the site’s history, it appears that whatever the number of actual interments in the cemetery, the majority likely were District of Columbia residents. This is an important site and an important issue and it deserves the utmost care and respect.

I am willing to meet with HOC staff to discuss this statement and the report and I am prepared to answer any questions the Commission may have.

Thank you.

Racial restrictive covenants renounced at celebration

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I began describing Silver Spring, Maryland, as a “sundown suburb” two years ago in articles and in public talks. My research has identified more than 50 residential subdivisions covering about 10 square miles next to Washington, D.C. that had racially restrictive covenants attached to them between c. 1904 and 1948. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that the covenants were unenforceable in the courts, whites used other tools to keep their communities free from African Americans (and Jews): steering, redlining, gentlemen’s agreements, club memberships, etc.

North Woodside is part of the historic Silver Spring sundown suburb. In the early 20th century subdivisions filled in the former farmland east of the B&O Railroad tracks and the Talbot Avenue Bridge. Like many of its counterparts, early landowners attached racially restrictive covenants to their properties prohibiting African Americans from living there — unless they were domestic servants.

David Cox wipes away tears during an emotional statement renouncing his neighborhood’s use of racially restrictive deed covenants.

At the Talbot Avenue Bridge Centennial celebration September 22, 2018, a remarkable thing happened. David Cox, the current president of the North Woodside-Montgomery Hills Civic Association made an emotional statement renouncing the anti-Black racism that kept his neighborhood all-white for much of the twentieth century. Cox affirmed North Woodside’s new bonds with the community “on the other side of the tracks,” Lyttonsville, Cox read a resolution unanimously approved by his neighborhood association’s board of directors.

Racially restrictive covenant included in a deed for the sale of a lot in Silver Spring’s North Woodside neighborhood, November 16, 1923.

After reading a racially restrictive covenant attached to a North Woodside deed in 1923, he said, “it is evidence that at one time, people in my neighborhood were interested in keeping it white.” Cox became emotional and as he regained his composure, he said, “My wife says I cry at McDonald’s commercials.He also acknowledged that the practice wasn’t limited to his neighborhood and that it was common throughout Silver Spring. “The tracks between our neighborhood and Lyttonsville were a dividing line between black and white spaces. Racially restrictive deed covenants enabled and perpetuated racial segregation and even after these restrictions were outlawed, the social dynamics caused by such patterns continued.”

Lyttonsville’s Charlotte Coffield (front) and North Woodside’s Anna White.

North Woodside neighbors worked closely with Lyttonsville residents and others to plan and produce the Talbot Avenue Bridge celebration. “Over time, of course, neighborhood change,” Cox said. “And we think North Woodside has changed for the better. I believe our community is a welcoming place.” He added

Over the past several years, our civic association has worked in collaboration with the civic associations of Lyttonsville and Rosemary Hills on issues associated with the bridge … we have advocated together at meetings. I hope we have started to build a level of trust. We want that spirit of trust and connection to continue and desire that it should extend beyond the work we are already doing on these issues to encompass social gatherings such as this centennial celebration.

 

Thank you David Cox and the people of North Woodside for taking this historic step.

Read the complete resolution here:

© 2018 D.S. Rotenstein

 

 

 

The River Road Moses Cemetery’s Lazarus act

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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

 

100 candles: Silver Spring is throwing a birthday party for a bridge

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Three Silver Spring neighborhoods are teaming up to throw a birthday party for a bridge Saturday September 22. The Talbot Avenue Bridge turns 100 this year and it is slated for demolition next year to make way for a new structure over the Purple Line. For most of its history, the bridge was a vital link connecting historically Black Lyttonsville with Silver Spring and Washington.

Talbot Avenue Bridge Centennial celebration being promoted on two “jumbotron” screens in downtown Silver Spring the week before the event.

The celebration at the bridge over the CSX Railroad tracks near Rosemary Hills Elementary School features musical performances by the Washington Revels Jubilee Voices and singer-songwriter Lea. Speakers from all three neighborhoods will talk about their experiences living there. There will be a student art show, African drumming, a libation ceremony, and pies and other sweets contributed by neighbors. County Executive Isiah Leggett will be there to present a proclamation declaring it Talbot Avenue Bridge Day. Continue reading →

The Talbot Avenue Bridge Centennial

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Several Silver Spring, Maryland, neighborhoods are planning a huge celebration to mark the Talbot Avenue Bridge’s centennial. Slated for demolition in 2019, the bridge is a significant civil rights landmark. The free September 22 event is open to the public and it will include musical performances by the Washington Revels Jubilee Voices and local Silver Spring musicians, drumming, artwork, the Talbot Avenue Bridge Pop-Up Museum, food and much more.

For more information about the bridge and the event and to volunteer or donate to help defray the costs for performers and equipment, please visit the Talbot Avenue Bridge Centennial website.

 

How a bridge closing underscores need for local journalism

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Yesterday evening, the Purple Line Transit Partners and Montgomery County’s Department of Transportation closed the Lyttonsville Place Bridge. The six-month closure will allow for the demolition and reconstruction of a new bridge to accommodate the Purple Line light rail.

Though local news outlets have covered the controversial bridge closing for the past several months, not a single journalist has written about Lyttonsville residents’ claims that the bridge closure and a detour using a street closed during urban renewal in the 1970s is environmental racism.  And, no journalists have covered the community’s search for a civil rights lawyer to take up their claim that the detour and bridge closing violate the National Environmental Policy Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by introducing impacts to the community that should have been evaluated under the law’s environmental justice requirements. Continue reading →

The Decatur “F-you” fence

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I spent a few days in Decatur this week following up leads derived from interviews I have done over the past year. One of the things that I wanted to see and photograph was a fence that a historic Black church had erected to block access to its parking lot in Decatur’s gentrifying Oakhurst neighborhood. I learned about the fence in a February 2018 interview that I did with a Decatur native who grew up in the city’s Beacon Community during the second half of the twentieth century.

Thankful Baptist Church parking lot and fence, June 2018.

“Right up there on Mead Road they’ve got a bar and now they’re trying to take over the parking lot on the weekends,” the woman told me in a telephone interview. “I think even when you try to be nice, they take advantage.” Continue reading →

Environmental racism explained in one photograph

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In the early twentieth century, the City of Decatur, Georgia, constructed a municipal trash facility in the heart of the city’s African American neighborhood. The city that long called itself a “City of Homes, Schools, and Churches” could have picked just about any site along its periphery; aerial photographs and historical maps indicate lots of space away from established homes, schools, and churches.

Sanborn fire insurance map portion showing Decatur’s African American neighborhood, c. 1950. The annotations show the trash facility (A); Decatur’s African American school (B); and, the Allen Wilson Terrace apartments (C).

Instead, the facility — which included an incinerator and space for refuse vehicle parking — was built adjacent to the city’s “colored school” and sandwiched into a densely occupied urban neighborhood. The City Manager’s annual report published in 1963 boasted of its facility: “10 collection trucks and 40 employees spend 1280 hours per week in disposing of 360,000 lbs. of garbage and trash weekly for the City of Decatur.” Continue reading →

Montgomery County Historical Society BOOM exhibit is a dud

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If I were mounting an exhibition to tell the story about Montgomery County, Maryland, in the 1950s, there would be lots of material from which to choose: the Cold War, suburbanization, and civil rights would certainly be in the mix. But how would I choose to tell the story about the Black experience in Montgomery County during that eventful decade?

One place I wouldn’t look for inspiration is the Montgomery County Historical Society’s exhibit, BOOM: The 1950s in Montgomery County. My latest article in The Activist History Review tackles the exhibit’s deficiencies.

There are many stories about African American entrepreneurialism, education, consumer choice, housing, religious life, and sports that would be solid candidates for some sort of exhibit featuring artifacts, texts, and photographs. How would I select the most compelling stories to tell? Continue reading →