The Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition has condemned the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission's approval of the sale of Westwood Tower to a Bethesda real estate investment firm last Thursday. Moses African Cemetery lies beneath the side driveway and rear parking lot of the apartment tower property, which is located at 5401 Westbard Avenue. The cemetery was desecrated during the construction of the apartment tower in the late 1960s.
Remains encountered within the footprint of the apartment tower by construction workers were illegally relocated into a mass grave elsewhere on the property, according to witnesses at the time. Montgomery County, which until now has owned the entire cemetery via HOC and the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, has vigorously blocked all attempts by cemetery advocates to conduct archaeological investigation of the site.
Now, the County only retains the M-NCPPC (a state-chartered organization) parcel of the cemetery between Westwood Tower and the site of a self-storage building now under construction behind the McDonald's on River Road. BACC and the Macedonia Baptist Church at 5119 River Road were not contacted by HOC prior to the sale agreement being approved last week, the coalition said in a statement.
"Black people and their ancestors are back on the auction block,” BACC President Dr. Marsha Adebayo said in the statement. “How does Montgomery County allow one of its agencies to sell off Black Dead Bodies without consulting the church that sanctified the ground in which our ancestors lie?" MBC Pastor Segun Adebayo asked. "The County has shown that it does not respect Black people either dead or alive. I call upon leaders of the faith community and people of conscience across the region to condemn this evil act, and to call upon the County Executive and County Council to put an end to this hateful plan."
County Executive Marc Elrich, while still on the County Council, was one of the few elected officials to lend support to advocates for the Moses cemetery. But the BACC criticized Elrich in its statement for failing to fulfill his promise to resolve the cemetery issue. "We will remember this in the upcoming election," Robert Stubblefield of United Front for Justice said.
While the sale represents yet another transfer of the cemetery property, there could be a bright spot in the acquisition of Westwood Tower by Bethesda real estate investment firm Charger Ventures. Now that the property is out of Montgomery County's hands, it is always possible that the new private owner might consider working with BACC, and allow an archaeological investigation to finally be conducted at the site.
6 comments:
How much has the church raised for their offer to buy the property?
It's insane you still give these people a microphone, Robert. It's not their land. Their opinion means literally nothing. If remains are found at some point in the future then move them as is legally required. The end.
The black-owned burial society that managed the cemetery claimed to have moved ALL of the bodies before they sold the land for profit back in the '50s. No need to waste money for an archaeologist to come look at a bunch of disarticulated deer bones, which, apart from the skull, are close enough in size and form to be mistaken for human bones.
10:25: That's simply false. There are zero records of any transfer of remains from this cemetery, and human remains were repeatedly encountered by workers excavating the site of the building in the late 1960s.
Those remains were not only human, but those in charge of the project were aware enough that the deceased were black to initially bury a few in a black cemetery near the Howard County line. After realizing just how many graves there were on the site, workers were eventually told to move the rest of the remains in the building's footprint into a mass grave nearby. Fortunately, witnesses survive to tell the tale!
It's simply the truth, but it is not PC to criticise a black-owned business. They had records of many bodies transferred to a cemetery in Rockville. The numerous tests done over many years showed no human remains, but that is not good enough for the church trying to claim the now very valuable land.
6:46: There was an extensive search of records during the sector plan process, and no one ever produced or found any legal records of remains being transferred from this cemetery. I'm not aware of any tests being performed on this site ever - it was Montgomery County itself that blocked all attempts to investigate the site.
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