MoCo NAACP grapples with Moses African Cemetery issue

Montgomery County Councilmember Craig Rice (D - District 2) and County Housing Opportunities Commission Executive Director Stacy Spann appeared at last night's meeting of the Montgomery County NAACP chapter at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Rockville, to discuss affordable housing and the ongoing controversy over the desecrated Moses African Cemetery in Bethesda. Their comments aligned with a new narrative County officials debuted this fall, which attempts to downplay the status of Macedonia Baptist Church as the sole contemporary party to the cemetery so far, and tie the specific story of these graves to a more general narrative about black cemeteries countywide. Under this narrative, there may be an effort to memorialize the cemetery, but the potential remains for bodies to be removed for development under existing Maryland law, or for a sham study to declare no remains exist due to the extreme depth at which many of the graves now lie - far beyond the range of ground penetrating radar.

Something will likely be done to memorialize the cemetery, Rice told attendees, which included representatives of Macedonia Baptist Church and their supporters, as well as members of the NAACP chapter. What that will be, whether everyone will agree on its adequacy, and who will pay for it, were subjects of disagreement in the room. There were also more-fundamental disagreements between the version of events so far given by Rice and Spann, and the church's version. That led to the NAACP announcing near the end of the meeting that it would appoint two mediators from its membership to meet with Macedonia and the HOC. to see if the parties can reach an agreement among themselves and developer Regency Centers on how to proceed.

One new detail that came to light is that Regency Centers had expressed some openness to the possibility of giving HOC an easement across part of its Bowlmor site, to access the rear parking garage of Westwood Tower. Currently, drivers pass over the parking lot to the side and rear of the building, that was laid atop the intact graves outside of the Westwood Tower footprint. That asphalt is believed to rest on top of as much as 60' of fill dirt dumped on the graves by the builder of Westwood Tower in the late 1960s, who also desecrated the cemetery.

However, when Macedonia Baptist Church officials took the potential offer to HOC, they say HOC declined to respond. That is at least one point NAACP officials hope their mediation can resolve.

"This is something that deeply touches my soul, what happened to our people," Macedonia Baptist Church Pastor Segun Adebayo told attendees after Rice and Spann spoke.

Rice had suggested taxpayers would pick up the tab for whatever memorial might be erected on, or near, the site. Adebayo sharply disputed that, saying his church has sought no money, and would raise any such funds from private donors itself.

Macedonia Baptist Church Social Justice Ministry Chair Marsha Coleman Adebayo reminded attendees of just how far cemetery advocates had come on their own over the last two years. "It took two years for the County to acknowledge it was a cemetery," she said, holding up a County map of the two graveyard parcels. She noted the church and their supporters had used public pressure - through marches, rallies and other actions - to temporarily stop Montgomery County, Regency and HOC from building a parking garage on top of the cemetery.

"Everything that we've gained so far, we've gained because we had the courage to go into the street and fight for it," Coleman Adebayo said. She added that 18 American University students are now researching the cemetery, and the vanished black community that existed around it from the end of the Civil War to the 1960s. They are collecting oral histories, and any remaining physical artifacts, she said. Such materials could be archived and displayed in the museum church officials envision being constructed at the site one day.

Leggett blows off Bethesda black cemetery advocates at NAACP meeting

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett pointedly ignored advocates for the historic Moses African Cemetery on the Westwood Tower property in Bethesda at an NAACP meeting last night in Rockville. About seven community members holding signs referring to the cemetery waited to ask Leggett to take action to protect it, during a Q&A session following Leggett's remarks to a packed room. When it was time to take questions, Leggett's finger pointed to just about any other place in the room than toward those advocating for the cemetery.

Leggett certainly recognized most of the cemetery advocates, as some have sat in on negotiations between Macedonia Baptist Church and Leggett's office earlier this year. And they were holding signs referring to the cemetery. The County Executive took many questions on other topics, then abruptly departed the room.

Among those waiting to ask Leggett about the cemetery was Harvey Matthews, who was a resident of the lost black community along River Road until 1959, when his family was swindled out of their land - which now is home to a Whole Foods Market. The episode was indeed odd - advocates for a black cemetery, who have the stated support of the local NAACP chapter in their quest to save the graveyard from a plan to build a parking garage atop the graves, being pointedly snubbed by Leggett, the first African-American to serve as a County Councilmember and Executive in Montgomery County.

Cemetery advocates to press Leggett at NAACP meeting

Advocates for the historic African-American cemetery on the Westwood Tower property in Bethesda will press Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett to take several actions to preserve it, when he appears before the County's NAACP chapter Tuesday night, November 28 at 7:00 PM, at the Carver Education Center, located at 850 Hungerford Drive in Rockville. Organizers stress they will not attempt to disrupt the meeting in any way, but hope to turn out as many cemetery supporters as possible to ask questions during the question-and-answer session following Leggett's remarks.

Led by Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) - Montgomery County, organizers hope to ask Leggett to:

• intervene on behalf of Macedonia Baptist Church to ensure access to the HOC property where the cemetery is (since HOC has indicated that we can proceed with the delineation 
• If the County will pay for the cemetery delineation study, as he offered in Feb 2017
• If Macedonia Baptist Church will be allowed to choose the archaeological team to conduct the cemetery delineation study
• If the County will purchase that land and make it a designated historic park with a living memorial
• If the County will support a museum devoted to local African American history

Macedonia Baptist Church presses Berliner on cemetery at NAACP meeting

Montgomery County Council
President Roger Berliner speaks
to the MoCo NAACP general
meeting last night in Rockville

"This is awkward"

Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner faced tough questioning about his role in an ongoing controversy over the African-American cemetery on the Westwood Tower property in Bethesda, at last night's county NAACP meeting. Leaders of Macedonia Baptist Church are scheduled to attend their first mediation meeting with the Planning Department and developer Regency Centers today, the beginning of a process Berliner and County Executive Ike Leggett had suggested two months ago. But the Planning Board ignored the letter and gave Regency a green light to conduct a private study of the cemetery. That plan was unacceptable to church officials, who noted that such a study would be inherently biased toward Regency, which was paying the firm conducting it.

Rev. Segun Adebayo, pastor of
Macedonia Baptist Church

Berliner, like virtually every County official who has spoken about the cemetery, has used conditional language to discuss it. That continues to upset church officials, who point out there is no evidence disputing the graveyard's existence. While even the Planning Department's historical expert for the Westbard sector plan acknowledged there is no evidence the graves were ever relocated (an admission then stricken from the final Planning Board draft of the plan, part of a Planning Department cover-up of the cemetery), Berliner and others have taken a more skeptical approach.

Marsha Coleman-Adebayo,
social justice director at MBC

"There is no shred of evidence that the bodies were ever removed," MBC Pastor Rev. Segun Adebayo told Berliner last night. "Respect that ground as a sacred ground. That land must be preserved as sacred land. Build a museum on that plot of land. That's what justice looks like, and that's what justice ought to be. Anything short of that will be unacceptable."

Harvey Matthews, who was
a resident of the historic River Road
African-American community, before
it was wiped out by developers

Berliner demurred on the museum idea, focusing on the letters he had written, and promising a positive outcome to the controversy. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo disputed Berliner's version of events, saying the church's weekly protests caused a previously-scheduled cemetery agenda item to be removed from the Planning Board's June 9 agenda, and made mediation possible on better terms. "It's not letters by Mr. Berliner, or letters by somebody else. It's because people have taken to the streets." She referred to the "massive cover-up" of the cemetery, and questioned Planning Director Gwen Wright's record of interactions with African-American communities in Montgomery County and Alexandria.

While saying he disagreed with Coleman-Adebayo on Wright, Berliner did move further toward acknowledging the cemetery exists. "There is an extraordinary amount of evidence. I concede that." He also apologized to Harvey Matthews, who was a resident of the black community on River Road, until his family was forced out by developers.

Matthews also pressed Berliner on the skeptical language officials keep using, despite Matthews himself having given firsthand accounts of the cemetery to County officials. He said he told Wright that construction workers who desecrated the cemetery while building Westwood Tower in the late 1960s spoke of having dug a "trench" on the site. Using a bulldozer, he said, they plowed remains into that mass grave, an illegal act. But an act that proves the bodies are still there.

Snowden Funeral Home, with vast knowledge of African-American burials in the county, has no record of the cemetery being relocated, Matthews noted. No documents have been found to suggest a removal. He himself used to play among the graves when he was a child growing up on River Road. "This is the real deal," he said of the graveyard. Having officials continue to express skepticism about the cemetery is "very disgusting, with me being born and raised there," he said.

"To the extent to which you feel disrespected, or you feel your ancestors were disrespected, I apologize," Berliner replied.

Matthews recalled how Wright dismissed the two anthropologists the church had wanted to monitor the cemetery investigation. "Wright kicked them to the curb. Why did they kick our people to the curb," Matthews asked Berliner.

Wright remains a controversial figure at the center of the cemetery scandal. When Berliner dashed out the door before the meeting was over, some from the church followed him outside the Carver Educational Services Center in Rockville. Wright "is a racist, and we all know it," Coleman-Adebayo said as Berliner walked to his car. "I don't believe that to be true," Berliner responded. "I don't believe Gwen Wright is a racist." "She wanted an all-white staff," Coleman-Adebayo countered, referring to the archaeological investigation of the cemetery. "That's the reality of it. And that's who you're supporting."

The two anthropologists dismissed by Wright were African-Americans, with extensive experience and peer acclaim in site studies of historic black cemeteries.

Berliner appeared to know he was in for a tough night early on, noting, "this is awkward." To his credit, he did not surround himself with police or security guards to have a civil conversation with his constituents, unlike Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson and others. He is also literally the only person to apologize to anyone from the church so far, regarding the disastrous way County officials have handled this matter. Of course, none of that guarantees - yet - that we are going to have a full and fair investigation of this cemetery, on which Regency Centers and Montgomery County want to build a parking garage.

The Council President wasn't just feeling the pressure from the audience in front of him. From the executive officers' table behind Berliner, Montgomery County NAACP President Linda Plummer made clear the organization stands with the church on the cemetery issue. "I want everyone to know the NAACP supports Macedonia Baptist Church, and their [pursuit] of justice."