Howard Team Searches Forlorn Burial Ground
By Lindsay Ryan
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, October 26, 2006
The professor and students descend into the filtered light of Walter C. Pierce Community Park. But for an occasional bus rumbling along Calvert Street above on a Sunday morning, there is a tranquility, even a timelessness, to much of the Northwest park that abuts the National Zoo. For biological anthropologist Mark E. Mack and his team of Howard University students, the journey into the park is personal as well as professional.
They are conducting a noninvasive archaeological survey that reaches back more than 200 years to a time when the land was the busiest local African American cemetery. The survey, they say, a way to remember the area's post-Civil War African American community and restore its marginalized history to importance.
"It's moral justice," said anthropology student Oshun Layne, 21, as she painstakingly raked the ground for burial evidence. "If your grandfather was down here, you would want someone to acknowledge that he existed, that this was where he rested."
From 1870 to 1890, more than 7,000 people were buried at the park and adjoining land, then the Colored Union Benevolent Association's cemetery, said neighborhood activist Mary Belcher. Those interred came from families affiliated with the churchgoers' association, whose members probably included community advocates from financially stable backgrounds: waiters, government messengers, drivers and laborers, Belcher and Mack say.
That history had been practically lost until summer 2005, when the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, which oversees the park, planned a soil erosion project to shore up a wall. While city contractors were digging pits during preliminary work, Belcher and fellow history aficionado Eddie Becker saw artifacts amid the excavated dirt, making them concerned the city project could disturb remains, Becker said.
It was not the only time the land's history had surfaced.
Cleanup volunteers at the park have repeatedly found human bones there, said Stephen W. Coleman, executive director of Washington Parks & People. He called the lack of preservation and upkeep at historic parks a "national disgrace."
After months of negotiations with community members, the parks department agreed to postpone and modify its plans, pending a survey led by Mack, who had served as laboratory director for the groundbreaking New York African Burial Ground Project. That project emerged in 1991 with the discovery of an 18th century African American cemetery, which had been used by enslaved and free blacks, during construction of a federal building in New York. More than 400 skeletal remains were unearthed within a year, and the site near City Hall ultimately was designated a National Historic Landmark.
Belcher said she was shocked when her own archival research uncovered the scale of the cemetery at Pierce Community Park, which was originally used by Native Americans. The land also was home to the city's first Quaker burial ground, founded in 1807, and the Cliffburne Hospital Barracks, a Civil War facility that served more than 400 patients at its peak, she said.
For Mack, the Howard professor who is conducting the survey free of charge, the work offers a chance to "take anthropology out of the ivory tower [and] into the streets."
"This is why I got into anthropology, to learn about my history, to learn about our collective history as an American people and to do something for the benefit of the people who came before me," said Mack, who studied anthropology at Howard as an undergraduate.
Starting in late summer, Mack and his students, most of whom are seniors, used electronic surveying equipment to grid the park, driving stakes every 10 meters as reference points for mapping finds. Now they spend several mornings each week inspecting every inch of ground to locate and document grave sites, artifacts and exposed human remains.
On a recent Sunday at the park, students Ikechukwu Mesumbe, 23, and Vyron Alexander, 29, cordoned a 10-meter square of land to examine. Layne and Miesha Hegwood, 23, both anthropology majors, combed through the area uphill of the trail. Alexander raked soggy leaves and tossed aside cans, twist tops and a kitchen knife.
Mack and Mesumbe waded through brush and poison ivy below the path. Kristin Baker, 20, the only junior on the team, stooped occasionally to check that a rock was not a foot bone.
The first square required nearly 1 1/2 hours of labor, and the park stretches, square after square, for four acres. The work, said Mesumbe, gives him a deeper appreciation for the effort archaeological research entails.
By late morning, the team was ready to document the first find of the day. Adult skeletal remains lay amid the gnarled roots of a black locust tree. The stained bones could be mistaken for sticks by an untrained eye, but Mack pointed out femurs, humeri, a tibia and an ulna. The decaying wall of a wooden casket was also visible, tucked under the base of the tree.
Mack and Hegwood set up a theodolite, a surveying tool that helps them pinpoint the location of the grave.
The group likely will finish the survey in late spring and issue a report with a map, descriptions of artifacts and remains, information gleaned from archival research and suggestions for the future of the site, Mack said.
Mack said he would prefer that the city leave the remains in their original resting place and fill in the eroded areas. He said he would like to see the cemetery's history integrated into school curriculum, an opinion echoed by several community members.
A commemorative garden or educational signs could enhance the park as well, said Mindy Moretti, president of Friends of Walter Pierce Park and an advisory neighborhood commissioner.
Coleman, the nonprofit Parks & People director, would like the park to become a key stop along an expanded Potomac Heritage Trail.
The park's history already is arousing interest. A historical tour several weeks ago drew more than 70 people, and the Kalorama Citizens' Association has been publicizing and supporting the survey. Student team members say pedestrians who stumble across the survey team often have heard of the cemetery.
Yet, the work needed to understand the site more fully is far from finished.
About noon on that recent Sunday, Hegwood, one of the Howard students, wrote the details of the remains on a dry-erase board and placed it beside the find. Mack put down a northward-pointing spade and measuring stick for reference. Hegwood snapped photos of the bones and casket, which the team soon covered again with dirt.
Then, Mack and the students picked up their rakes and moved on.
Another square of earth awaited.
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