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.