[Durham INC] African American Cemeteries Program Nov. 16

[Tom Miller]

Neighbors and Friends:

 

At 3:30 p.m., Saturday, November 16, the Friends of Geer Cemetery and Duke
University will present a program on African American Cemeteries.  The
program's panelists will discuss American memory, cemetery preservation,
African-American deathways, white supremacy, gentrification, and public
space.  The program will be held at the North Carolina School of Science and
Mathematics.  It is free and open to the public.

 

Panelists will include William Sturkey, Historian, from the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kami Fletcher, Historian, Albright College,
Brian Palmer, Peabody Award-winning journalist, and Erin Holloway Palmer,
from Friends of East End Cemetery in Richmond.  The moderator will be Adam
Rosenblatt of Duke University.

 

Persons interested in history, cemeteries, personal and collective memory,
and the disparity of white and black experience in America should find the
program interesting.

 

The Friends of Geer Cemetery is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to
the reclamation, study, and preservation of the Geer Cemetery.  From 1877
until it was essentially abandoned around 1940, the Geer Cemetery was the
principal burying ground for African-Americans in segregated Durham.  Unlike
the city-owned and maintained Maplewood Cemetery which was restricted for
white people, the Geer cemetery was owned and maintained by members of the
African-American community.  The cemetery is located off Camden Avenue in
northeast central Durham.  It is a place of haunting beauty and dignity.  In
it are buried many of Durham's earliest African-American leaders.  It
remained active until it was eclipsed by Beechwood Cemetery, the
separate-but-equal cemetery the city created for black citizens in 1925.
Although legal segregation in Durham's cemeteries ended in the 1960s, the
legacy of separation lingers today.

 

The Geer Cemetery is perhaps the most important artifact of the
African-American experience from Durham's earliest days.  It is under threat
from neglect and encroachment.  The Friends of Geer Cemetery organization is
working to save the cemetery and rediscover its story.  New members are
welcome.  Ask about joining at the November 16 program.

 

I am  a big supporter of the FOGC and I am looking forward to this program.
Please join me.

 

Tom Miller

 

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