The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and a civil rights activist with national influence, excoriated Montgomery County officials yesterday while celebrating a court victory by advocates for the desecrated Moses African Cemetery in Bethesda. After the court granted advocates an injunction blocking the sale of the Westwood Tower property that contains the cemetery, Bethesda investment firm Charger Ventures withdrew its $51 million offer to purchase it from the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission. "Quit trying to sell this property," Barber admonished County officials in a statement on Tuesday.
Barber called on the County to turn the cemetery property over "to those who want to preserve it," describing the now-scuttled sale agreement as "illegal." He praised Charger Ventures for walking away from the deal with the HOC. "We are heartened by this company’s decision, which is a victory for all who organized to honor their ancestors there and prevent the exploitation of their ancestors for economic gain," Barber said. "The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has been honored to stand with those who stood for justice, and we say with them, ‘forward together, not one step back!'’’
Imagine having an out of town developer want to build a garage over the cemetery where your family is buried. Unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteThe original slave descendants were swindled out of their land, then saw the cemetery desecrated decades ago.
The original sin of Westbard.
This is legit the dumbest local story of faux outrage I've seen in my 40 years living in MoCo. Can't wait for this thing to be sold off so I can stop reading about it.
ReplyDeleteHow much were the original slave descendants paid for their land, and why did they choose to sell their ancestors graves? Aren’t they at least partly responsible for this problem? Of course any graves discovered during excavation should be properly relocated.
ReplyDelete2:35: The descendants were never paid anything. A fraternal organization purchased the land and established the cemetery. In 1958, it sold the cemetery to Leo O. Furr, M.D. The property was then acquired by Dr. Lazlo Tauber, who developed Westwood Tower in the late 1960s. At some point in those 10 years, someone bulldozed or removed the headstones from the cemetery. Actual graves were then desecrated during construction of the building, and remains within the building footprint were illegally relocated into a mass grave elsewhere on the property. Remaining graves were paved over.
ReplyDeleteThe County has yet to investigate, nor allow a private investigation, of the site and which later property owner removed the headstones. But we know that Dr. Tauber was aware it was a black cemetery, as the architect of Westwood Tower initially took some of the remains and reburied them in another black cemetery near the Howard County line.
Sounds to me like the fraternal organization is to blame here. Who sells a cemetery unless it's of no importance to them?
ReplyDelete9:31: I've never seen any public statement from the organization at the time. My guess is that they may have run out of funds and had to sell assets they owned. These organizations served a more prominent function back when the U.S. was segregated, and there had to be separate burial plots like this.
ReplyDelete@9:39 That's a lot of conjecture but let's say they were running short on funds. If the cemetery was so important to the community, why didn't the community raise funds to keep it going?
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