Excavation for self-storage building begins at edge of Moses African Cemetery site in Bethesda

A day after Bethesda residents marched in a Black Lives Matter parade, heavy equipment was moved onto the site of a former auto repair facility behind the Bethesda McDonald's on River Road. And Thursday, those machines were digging up the property, which became embroiled in the controversial case of the Moses African Cemetery in recent years. The parcel being dug up is directly adjacent to the cemetery, which was already desecrated by a construction crew building the Westwood Tower apartments in the late 1960s.

Leaders of the nearby Macedonia Baptist Church on River Road and cemetery advocates had fought the proposed self-storage project's approval. Outlet Road, on the McDonald's side of the property, was once the route of funeral processions from the church to the cemetery.

Part of the property that literally was part of the burial site was hastily transferred from the property owner to Montgomery County at the behest of the Mongomery County Planning Board, which has blocked every effort to identify gravesites across the entire cemetery, which lies beneath asphalt and fill dirt. Board Chair Casey Anderson infamously called police on African-American church leaders and protesters at several board meetings, including the one where he and the board unanimously approved the self-storage project.

In a County that pledged "Black Lives Matter" verbally this week, the white Anderson faced no blowback from his Democratic colleagues in political office nor the press, despite national campaigns exhorting whites to "stop calling the police" as a convenient way to remove an inconvenient situation involving African-Americans such as this. When my camera came out to capture the scene, reporters for the Washington Post and other local media outlets conspicuously put theirs away. Anderson was unanimously reappointed chair of the board by the all-Democrat Montgomery County Council last year, despite his actions, and over the objections of the black community and progressive activists. In fact, Anderson continues to be rewarded for his loyal work on behalf of the Montgomery County political cartel, including being named "Montgomery County's Most Influential Person" by The Seventh State's Adam Pagnucco this year. Anderson is "one of the greatest planning board chairs ever," Pagnucco gushed, predicting the County will bear Anderson's stamp "for the next 50 years."

Protests against the self-storage project centered around two concerns. First, the County consistently blocked efforts to identify specific gravesites, and the piece the landowner transferred to the County meant that once again cemetery advocates would be blocked from any archaeological investigation on that plot.

The second concern relates to a common phenomenon in historic African-American cemeteries, many of which - like this one - have been neglected, or built over by developers: cemetery boundaries were often unclear. Sometimes casket would be mistakenly buried over the official boundary of the graveyard. So while the portion of the property being redeveloped for the self-storage building was not part of the cemetery according to land records, there is a legitimate fear that remains buried over the property line by mistake could be disturbed by the excavation and construction. Or, given the construction method planned for the building, any such graves might simply end up under a self-storage facility.

Calls for an archaeological study to ensure this did not happen were rebuffed by County officials, just as they were in the larger case of the cemetery portion that belonged to Equity One and - later - the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission. As of now, construction on the River Road site is full-speed-ahead.