Two Congressmen proposed the African American Burial Grounds Network Act to preserve African American burial sites across the country.
North Carolina Rep. Alma S. Adams and Virginia Rep. Donald McEachin proposed the Act with intentions of giving people a way to locate African-American burial grounds.
“A lot of times we don’t know where these burial grounds and cemeteries are. This act would create a voluntary network, so that these locations could be listed and put in a network, so that people could know where they are. Sometimes we have folks building and digging up areas like that, and it’s really disgraceful,” Adams said.
The lawmakers want the act to become a part of the National Park Service program. If passed, Legislation would give funding to voluntary initiatives that research and preserve those sites.
As of now, a national database for African American burial locations does not exist, but there are groups who work towards preserving and collecting data on these sites.
The African American Cemetery Commitee in Hartsville is one example. Volunteers of the commitee meet up on the second Saturday of every month to clean up the Hartsville Colored Cemetery.
“There is brothers out here. There is fathers. There is mothers, and there is sisters. Since we’ve been revitalizing the area, people have come from New York, Maryland, down in Florida, to put flowers on the graves and recognize the families that have been lost for a long time,” said Chairman of the commitee, Tre Gammage.
At the Hartsville Colored Cemetery, the bodies of 500 African Americans are at rest. It was the first place where black people could be buried in Hartsville.
Gammage said he was excited to hear about the African American Burial Grounds Act proposal.
“They are looking to put more funding into restoring African American cemeteries because the history has been forgotten so much. The history of black people is the history of America. I know that we just finished Black History Month, but that’s not the only time that we can celebrate the people that helped build this country, “Gammage said.
Although there have been hearings on the Act, no definite decision has been made yet.
