A seven-year dispute between advocates for a desecrated Black cemetery in Bethesda, and the developers of a self-storage building directly adjacent to it, is moving to the courtroom. Several activists have filed suit against the project's developers, 1784 Capital Holdings, LLC and Bethesda Self Storage Partners, LLC, in Montgomery County Circuit Court. The civil case is the latest effort by the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition to halt and reverse development impacts to the burial ground - which is located under land occupied by the Westwood Tower apartments and a second plot hastily-purchased by Montgomery County to avoid an archaeological search for graves - and ultimately have the graveyard memorialized and restored.
The six plantiffs in the case are asking the court for "a judicial declaration that the land, designated as parcel 242, was used as a burial ground and that human remains, burial artifacts and funerary objects were wrongfully removed from the site, and for an order requiring the defendants to return such remains, artifacts and objects to BACC," a press release from BACC today notes. The plaintiffs are also seeking monetary compensation.
Although the self-storage site was not part of the original cemetery, the concern since 2017 has been that burials in Black cemeteries sometimes were placed beyond the boundaries of the graveyard in question, when property lines were not delineated by fencing. The core of the dispute is that observers with BACC say they saw potential remains and funerary objects being excavated and trucked away, while the archaeological expert hired by the developers reported that they had determined these were not human remains or funerary objects. Those bones and objects in question are now stored in a Virginia warehouse, and BACC has sought to have them reviewed by their own experts.
Among the plaintiffs are Harvey Matthews, a former resident of the Black community on River Road between Brookside Drive and Little Falls Parkway, that was wiped out by developers who evicted the residents to redevelop the area into an industrial and commercial zone in the 1960s. A second plaintiff is Darold Cuba, a historian who has extensively researched kinship communities and networks that formed in post-Emancipation America, exactly like the one on River Road formed by freed slaves from the adjacent Loughborough plantation. Cuba is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge.
BACC and its President, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, are also plaintiffs. BACC community organizer and activist Ari Gutman, and activist and former Green Party candidate for Montgomery County Council Timothy Willard round out the parties filing suit.
The plaintiffs have the highest-powered legal representation yet in the cemetery saga. They are being represented by the prominent and massive international law firm of Holland & Knight.
A pre-trial conference in the case has been scheduled for June 5, 2025 in Montgomery County Circuit Court. The case has been assigned to Judge James A. Bonifant.
Photo: Gail Rebhan
5 comments:
They don't even claim there's an imaginary cemetery there, but now they're just suing everyone in the same zip code? And over projects that have long since excavated and redeveloped? What is even the goal of these people? Just to piss everyone off and hold half of Westbard hostage?
That's behind the MCD, correct? Why on earth do we need yet another self storage right there when there are already at least two if not 3 others? And two, that may be the biggest self storage ever built. It looks big enough for an apartment building. It's huge. That whole side of River, as you have reported in the past, needs to be blown up. Light industrial is fine and needed but not there at least not any more. Bethesda Row was all light industrial. What Fed Realty has done there is incredible. Think of what could be done in that corridor similar to what's being done behind there at Westbard.
JAC: Yes, between the McDonald's and the telecommunications tower. It used to be a body shop.
I'm guessing they can't get approval for a big residential as the tiny access road can't handle the traffic. Self storage units have very little traffic impact.
That is correct, yes. They want to make a big enough stink to get paid to go away.
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