“Lesson Plan For Chapter 3: Sacred Ground: How a Segregated Graveyard Preserves the Struggles and Successes of an African American Community in Virginia by Lynn Rainville” in “A Resource for Instructors”
Lesson Plan for Chapter 3: Sacred Ground: How a Segregated Graveyard Preserves the Struggles and Successes of an African American Community in Virginia by Lynn Rainville
Unlike some primary sources, gravestones are usually accessible to a wide audience. You don't need to make an appointment in an archive or read hundreds of pages in a hard-to-locate book. Instead, you simply need to locate a public, historic burial ground and go for a stroll. For the past two decades I have been encouraging local residents to visit cemeteries outside of the somber occasion of a funeral. There is much to learn from gravestone inscriptions, epitaphs, carved symbols, naming practices, headstone placement, and the landscape of the dead.
When you are conducting such research, the first step is to produce a map of the stones; the distribution of graves will be critical to understanding the subtle patterning of burials based on race, class, and gender. Maps are also the foundation to creating a walking tour of the site. The next step is to research and create minibiographies of the dead. Third, record the symbols carved into the stones, the flowers, geometric patterns, religious symbolism, and more recent laser-carved portraits. The diversity of symbols will vary by region, class, gender, religious denomination, and ethnicity. Finally, collect a sample of inscriptions from the stones, including quotes from secular and religious texts as well more personalized epitaphs. This information serves as the historic data that can be woven into brochures, websites, and walking tours.[1] Below I share a handful of examples that I have worked on in Virginia, as well as a few specific educational projects that the Preservers of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery have created.
Table 3.1: Collecting Biographical Information about People Buried in a Cemetery |
Step 1: Collect information about the deceased’s name, birth and death date, age at death. Look at nearby stones to see if you can determine other kinship connections, such as parents or siblings. |
Step 2: Enter in the information in an online genealogical program (most public libraries subscribe to one or more of these services and several offer free accounts). In addition to Federal Census entries (which will usually allow you to build a family tree for the deceased), look for marriage certificates, veteran service records, city directories (which often list occupations), and public “family trees” that provide more biographical information. |
Step 3: Work with modern-day community members to locate descendants to “check your work” and see if it is permissible to share the information with local historical societies, genealogical groups, or libraries. This information is the foundation to building more complete local histories and including the successes and contributions of African Americans. |
When I started studying historic African American cemeteries in 2001 I was committed to sharing my research with a wide audience, so I designed a website where genealogists and community members could search for specific people, gravestones, or cemeteries.[2] Today there are many commercial options for uploading this type of information, including findagrave.com and billiongraves.com. I recommend sharing the information collected from a historic cemetery through one of those sites to avoid the technological upkeep associated with an individual website. Social media is another effective way to share biographical and historical information uncovered in a cemetery. Several organizations in Virginia are doing an excellent job engaging descendants, visitors, and researchers through their various profiles. For example, the Preservers of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery regularly share their research on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/daughtersofzioncemetery/.
Websites and social media posts are useful ways to share information about a cemetery, but the most powerful response will come from an in-person visit. A decade ago I realized that the most effective way to encourage this habit was to start with children. I partnered with Professor Patrice Grimes at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education to bring her aspiring teachers to the Daughters of Zion Cemetery once or twice a year for a guided tour.
Figure 3.3. Graduate students in education visiting the cemetery to integrate gravestone data (photograph by the author)
Since all communities have cemeteries and they are often not far from public schools, they make for a convenient, albeit unusual, field trip. When the education students visited the site, I demonstrated how they could use the stones as primary sources to teach American history. Many of the history topics required by Virginia's Standards of Learning can be addressed by a careful study of the mortuary iconography, biographical data, and socioeconomic patterning of the gravestones. In a historic African American cemetery, students can also trace the history of slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, segregation, and the civil rights movement. Gravestone data can also be used to teach elementary students about family ties, the changing popularity of given names, the meaning of funerary symbols, and the euphemistic adjectives and nouns used to describe death and dying.
Figure 3.4. A selection of gravestones from the Daughters of Zion Cemetery that illustrate patterns in genealogical data, motifs, and inscriptions (photograph by the author)
Older students can calculate the average death date, determine the percentage of males and females or adults versus children, learn spatial skills by mapping the gravestones, or apply Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) by closely examining the stones. College students can embark on more detailed studies of the socioeconomic backgrounds of the deceased and oral histories with surviving family members and reconstruct a social history of the community. Teachers can compile this research into a tour that guides students through different chapters in local history.
Table 3.2. Analyzing a Gravestone
Step 1: Draw a gravestone.
Step 2: Gravestone Venn Diagram. Compare your gravestone to a classmate’s: how are they similar? How are they different?
Step 3: Visual Discovery. Draw and identify any symbols on your gravestone. Answer the following questions: what symbols do you see? What words do you see? Identify any geometric shapes.
Step 4: Interpret the Evidence. What do you think the symbols mean? Most shapes carved into gravestones are motifs, reoccurring designs that represent what people thought about death. What emotions or messages do your motifs convey?
Step 5: Historic inscriptions. Record any words that are legible on the gravestone. Collect a sample of two dozen inscriptions and divide the nouns and adjectives into two columns: optimistic and pessimistic. Is one category more popular than the other? If so, why do you think that is the case?
Figure 3.5. “A history hunt” designed for fourth and fifth graders to learn about Black history by taking a walking tour of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery (map and guide by the author)
Students of all ages can learn about our shared history from these sites. In Daughters of Mount Zion Cemetery, the Preservers have worked with Dede Smith to create a walking tour that guides visitors to fourteen "stops" as they stroll through the cemetery.[3]
Figure 3.6. Excerpt from an audio tour of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery designed by Dede Smith, https://publichistory.as.virginia.edu/daughters-zion/audio-tour
They partnered with the University of Virginia's Institute of Public history to host a website and share this information widely. Research is ongoing into the lives of the individuals buried at the site. Websites, social media accounts, and tours are an ideal way to share this information and locate more leads. More traditional outlets work as well. Over the past two decades I have been interviewed by local radio stations, television shows, and newspapers.[4] I have received hundreds of significant research leads from descendants and local residents from this outreach. The Preservers have also uncovered invaluable photographs, documents, and stories from their work with descendants. For example, Robert King, the great-grandson of Ida Bell Burton (1893-1946), helped identify the location of her gravestone and shared ornate photographs and significant genealogical data.[5] The Preservers have gone one step further and organized some of their finds into an exhibition that opened in the fall of 2019 at the local Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society.[6]
The information compiled from these mortuary sites illustrates historic narratives and national values including the worth of the individual, the role of the family, the variety of religious beliefs, struggles for freedom and equality, and the importance of patriotism. Through their monuments, cemeteries reveal ideas about social mobility, gender, race, and attitudes about death and the afterlife. Cemeteries are instructional spaces that, if read correctly, have much to teach us about our social and moral values, and about our shared history.
See, for example, "Walking Tour of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery," African-American Cemeteries in Albemarle and Amherst Counties, http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/cem/CemSearch_Tour_Zion.shtml. ↑
"African American Cemeteries in Albemarle and Amherst Counties," http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/cem/. I stopped updating the site in 2011. ↑
"Daughters of Zion Cemetery," University of Virginia Arts and Sciences Institute for Public History, last modified February 8, 2023, http://publichistory.as.virginia.edu/daughters-zion/audio-tour. ↑
"Dr. Lynn Rainville Shared Her Experience Compiling Her Latest Work, 'Hidden History,' interview on Virginia This Morning, WTVR CBS 6 (Richmond), March 27, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6hqOlO2ygQ; "Saving the Remains of the Day," Tribune (Charlottesville), January 1, 2009, 1. ↑
"Burton, Ida Bell," https://daughtersofzioncemetery.org/the-people/burton-ida-bell/. ↑
"Gone but Not Forgotten Exhibit," Facebook event, August 2, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/events/2032269490401128/. ↑
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