Macedonia Baptist Church still wants Planning Board vote delayed over cemetery controversy (Video/Photos)

Planning Department deploys

large police presence to greet

protesters at HQ

Macedonia Baptist Church and their supporters are not accepting the latest proposal from the Montgomery County Planning Department in a dispute over a desecrated African-American cemetery in the Westbard area of Bethesda. On Tuesday, the department said it would temporarily remove the Housing Opportunities Commission/Westwood Tower site - where the cemetery is located, according to land records and eyewitness accounts - from developer Equity One's sketch plan. The Planning Board would then review and vote on the plan, and the excluded site would be reviewed as a later amendment, after the cemetery investigation is complete.

That proposal is "insufficient," church representative Marsha Coleman-Adebayo said in an interview this afternoon. The church still wants the Equity One sketch plan removed from the Board's February 23 agenda, and postponed until the cemetery review is complete.

Equity One is "driving the process," Coleman-Adebayo said. Church leaders and members, whose ancestors are among those buried in the cemetery, are concerned about the Board's "rush to judgement," she said. She added that it would be inappropriate to give the developer approval to put up buildings all around the borders of the cemetery, should the land around it move through the sketch and site plan process before the HOC/Westwood Tower site is investigated.

"We would like to see a museum there," Coleman-Adebayo said of the cemetery site, currently hidden under a parking lot and the Westwood Tower high-rise.

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Planning Board Chair

Refuses to Accept

Church Petition

Coleman-Adebayo also accused the Planning Department of attempting to place a "gag order" on the independent anthropologist and archaeologist the church wants to monitor the cemetery investigation. She said they would be unable to report anything they saw or learned to the church or the community. Speakers at last Sunday's protest explicitly said they wanted a process in which the church and other community stakeholders would have equal and immediate access to all of the findings by the developer and its cemetery investigation contractor.

The church has repeatedly tried to schedule a meeting with Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson, Coleman-Adebayo said, but "he has refused to meet with us." She said they believe he has met privately with Equity One. "He's made a distinction between" the church and Equity One, she added, noting that the latter is a multi-billion dollar corporation on the New York Stock Exchange.

Protesters from the church, and their supporters in the community, gathered on Georgia Avenue outside the Planning Department headquarters in Silver Spring at 2:00 PM today. After displaying signs and chanting for a few minutes, they were approached by a police officer who told them they needed to move to the courtyard at the back of the building. Coleman-Adebayo responded that the protesters were allowed to be on the public sidewalk, and declined to move. After further polite discussion, the officer left.

A short time later, protesters walked around the building to enter the rear door. They were seeking to deliver a petition, signed by hundreds asking the Board to postpone their February 23 vote on the sketch plan, to Board Chair Casey Anderson.

Three Park Police vehicles were parked near the building, and the group was approached by three Park Police officers. In all, the Planning Department called in six Park Police cruisers and one Montgomery County police officer against the protesters, the largest deployment I've seen against residents at the Planning headquarters. Usually there is one police officer present, and only when a public hearing is expected to be contentious.

Protesters continued into the building, with the officers following. At some point, church leaders were told they could not bring their banner into the Planning Board meeting room. Protesters lined up at the back of the room quietly. One carrying a small sign was approached by a Park Police officer. "That sign doesn't meet the requirements," he told her. "You'll have to go outside." The Planning Department headquarters is a public building, and its meetings are public. Protesters were silent indoors, and did not disrupt the business of the board at any time during today's protest.

Planning Board Chair
Casey Anderson refuses
to accept petition from
Macedonia Baptist Church

Planning Board Chair Anderson suddenly recessed the meeting. As he walked from the dais toward the exit, Coleman-Adebayo attempted to hand him the petition. "I want to give you our petition," she said, extending the papers to Anderson. He refused to take it. "Did you talk to Equity One," Coleman-Adebayo asked. "No, I can't talk to anybody," Anderson replied.

Technically, Anderson is correct. In practice, however, he has been selective in avoiding ex parte communication since he was named chair of the board. According to an internal Planning Department email, Anderson scheduled a private meeting with Equity One on September 11, 2015. He did not report this ex parte communication at the start of the next Planning Board meeting as required by law. No action was taken against him by any oversight body.

Anderson also spoke privately with Equity One partners minutes after the Westbard sector plan was passed by the County Council on May 3, 2016. He has also, inappropriately, attended charrettes on the Westbard and Rock Spring sector plans. Anderson himself stated he had spoken to attendees at the Westbard charrette, again in violation of ex parte rules, claiming later they told him they were too scared to speak in favor of a draft plan widely opposed by the community. At the Rock Spring meeting, he not only spoke with individuals, but at one point seized control of the meeting to deliver a verbal beatdown to residents who dared to criticize the early framework of the plan.

Anderson's annual taxpayer-funded salary is $200,000. The church's petition was eventually accepted today by Planning Department Deputy Director Rose Krasnow.

Protesters plan to gather at Macedonia Baptist Church again this Sunday, February 19, at 1:30 PM.

Protesters take to the streets over desecration of African-American cemetery in Bethesda (Video+Photos)

The controversy over how to address an African-American cemetery in the Westbard area of Bethesda that was desecrated and then buried in the late 1960s, boiled over into the streets yesterday. In yet another sign of how the Montgomery County Council and Planning Board seem to now be at war with their own constituents, this was only the second matter to result in citizens marching against Montgomery County officials in my lifetime (compared to the fairly common union protests). In this case, members of the Macedonia Baptist Church and their supporters are asking the Planning Board to not act on the Equity One sketch plan that envisions a 6-story building and parking garage on top of the cemetery.

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coverage of the march

Despite the request of the church to delay the sketch plan review until a cemetery delineation can be carried out, the Planning Board is going forward anyway. A youth leader at Macedonia Baptist said it was "disrespectful" to put parking over their buried ancestors.

Several community leaders, as well as nearby residents, stood and marched in solidarity with church members yesterday. "What a blessing it is to be in this righteous fight with all of you," said Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd of the River Road Unitarian Universalist Church. While Town of Somerset Mayor Jeffrey Slavin spoke, telling the crowd to "stay woke," the Montgomery County Council was nowhere to be found. Ed Amatetti, a Republican running for the Council in District 2 in 2018, was there, however.

Among the chants and musical selections employed during the march was a particularly appropriate one, "We Shall Not Be Moved." Considering that a developer can try to relocate graves under Maryland law, the title's defiance has a double meaning.

With a robust Montgomery County Police presence, marchers started off into the right westbound lane of River Road in front of the church, chanting anti-Equity One slogans. Officers did a great job of directing traffic and protesters, keeping everyone safe. At the Capital Crescent Trail bridge over River Road, officers shut down the whole state highway for several minutes to allow marchers to cross and reach what was once known as "Outlet Road." This was the route funeral processions would take from the church to the cemetery in decades past, and currently sits below the retaining wall at the rear of the McDonald's parking lot.

Once at the cemetery site, one of the two academics the church wants to represent them when Equity One's hired firm eventually begins a cemetery search, spoke. Dr. Rachel Watkins said the cemetery must be delineated "before any ground is further disturbed or touched." She also advocated having the community "embedded with the discovery process" of any delineation, as much as the developer would be.

Harvey Matthews, who lived in the black community on the site of today's Whole Foods Market, said he always took great pride in telling people he was "born in Bethesda," and "the first black kid to live in Kenwood." He had childhood friends who lived in Kenwood, which was separated from Matthews' property by the Willett Branch stream. Two sycamore trees that were planted out front when he was nine are still standing between the sidewalk and the Whole Foods parking lot.

Whole Foods sent word through the police that they would arrest any of us who entered their property during the protest. Nice.

Matthews recalled playing hide-and-seek and sledding in the cemetery, and doesn't understand why there is any skepticism by the County regarding its existence. "I don't know what game the County's playing," he said, "or how they're playing it." He said he would like there to be some physical memorial that his he, his children, and his grandchildren can visit to pay their respects.

"These Africans in the ground were somebody," said a representative of the Black is Back Coalition, a group organizing for peace, social justice and reparations. "Their presence and blood runs through all of us."

The weather cooperated greatly, with an occasional sprinkle near the end of the march. In a hopeful sign, the sun emerged as Rev. McDonald-Ladd gave a benediction at the close of the march.

Just before the end of the march, protesters paused at the site of Matthews' former home to pay their respects to his family. "I don't care what they say, Whole Foods, about arresting people," he declared. "I was here first."

 *  *  *

Commissioners are currently scheduled to take up the plan at their February 23 meeting. The Planning Department issued a statement in response to news of the plannned protest last week, in which it claimed that approval of the sketch plan would not close any aspect of delineating the cemetery. However, that legal question is not as clear-cut as the news release suggested, in regards to what authority and advantages the developer would hold with an approved sketch plan.

I was, frankly, astonished at the department's insistence that the sketch plan review would go forward. Given the department's never-FBI-investigated role in the Farm Road scandal, in which black landowners were cheated out of their property rights after the road that accessed their properties was "accidentally" deleted by the Planning Board - to the benefit of a development firm, the optics of the Board now thumbing their nose at a black church over desecration of a black cemetery are pretty horrendous. Good Lord.

But after attending yesterday's protest, I am now confident that the sketch plan review is going to be postponed. That's because leaders of the protest made clear that if the Planning Board goes ahead with the sketch plan review at its February 23 Planning Board meeting, they will "shut it down" through civil disobedience if needed. The scene of an African-American congregation shutting down a meeting, in which extremely-ambitious politicians like Casey Anderson and Natali Fani-Gonzalez would be siding with a multi-billion-dollar corporation over black constituents, would be a public relations disaster for the Montgomery County political cartel. They're not going to give us that photo op, folks.

To keep the pressure on, though, two more protests have been scheduled prior to the meeting:

1. Thursday, February 16, 2017 from 2:00-4:00 PM outside the Planning Headquarters at 8787 Georgia Avenue

2. Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 1:30 PM outside the Macedonia Baptist Church at 5119 River Road

How could this desecration, like the River Road black community itself, remain "secret" for so many decades? For some reason, Montgomery County never paid any attention, nor pursued the people responsible for this crime against humanity. As syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. said in his Washington Post book review of The Blood of Emmett Till yesterday, "when African-American lives are destroyed by white people, America has historically been reluctant to bring the perpetrators to account." Should it be surprising that this lack of consideration extends to the African-American dead, as well?

Protesters gather in
front of the
Macedonia Baptist Church

Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd of
the River Road
Unitarian Universalist Congregation was
among several representatives of local
organizations in attendance

A former pastor of
Macedonia Baptist Church
has said developers have
relentlessly tried to drive
the church off its land

Call and response
with an Equity One theme

The Kenwood, seen in
the background, was
constructed on land that
held some of the final
homes of the original
black community

Church trustee
Harvey Matthews (L) gets
protesters ready to march
onto River Road as
police begin to close lanes

The 850' telecommunications
tower was the site of the
River Road Colored School,
which Matthews attended

There were some emotional
moments at the site of
the cemetery

Equity One
security guards
were called in

Making the climb
to Westbard Avenue

Now on Westbard

Site of Matthews' former
home, taken by developers;
it is now a Whole Foods

Matthews recalls his
years living on this
property, standing next
to the sycamore trees (center)
his family planted when he was 9

Matthews is interviewed
after the march by
Jasmine Norwood of
DCW50 News

Westbard developer hires firm to verify existence of African-American cemetery in Bethesda

Developer Equity One/Regency Centers has hired Kensington-based Ottery Group to investigate an African-American cemetery believed to be on property it is seeking to redevelop in the Westbard area of Bethesda. There is strong evidence from eyewitness accounts that the cemetery was desecrated during construction of Westwood Tower by another developer in the late 1960s.

The Little Falls Watershed Alliance reports that two archaeologists with a strong background in historic African-American cemeteries, Dr. Rachel Watkins, Professor of Archaeology at American University and Dr. Michael Blakey, Professor of Archaeology at the College of William and Mary, will join the effort along with the Macedonia Baptist Church nearby on River Road, and the Montgomery County Department of Parks.

As you may recall from my previous reports, the known site of the cemetery has asphalt and fill on top of it, which will have to be removed to allow for scanning by ground-penetrating radar. A second challenge will be locating remains that reportedly were illegally moved to adjacent land by construction workers building Westwood Tower. One of the many buildings planned for the massive redevelopment of "Westbard" would intrude on both the cemetery site, and the stream buffer of the Willett Branch. Delineation of the cemetery would either require those plans to be revised, or for remains discovered to be relocated under Maryland law.

Representatives of the Macedonia Baptist Church were outspoken on the need to properly investigate what happened to the cemetery - and to hold those responsible accountable - at a LFWA event last year. I second their sentiments on this potentially immoral and criminal act 50 years ago.