Author: Haven Buechner Page 2 of 3

One thing that stood out to me while working on the annotated bibliography assignment was the importance of picking an interesting topic. I chose the topic of the burial ground for African-Americans, which was absolutely fascinating to me from the beginning! In my research for my sources, I found that it felt less like an assignment and more like a personal passion project. (Although, writing the annotated bibliography did feel like an assignment – albeit a pretty cool one.) I think we might be visiting the burial ground in our field trip tomorrow, which would be so cool to see in person. In my research, I found out that the burial ground had been destroyed and developed into a parking lot, and there were some notes on attempts to reclaim the land, but they didn’t mention if the efforts were successful (or fully realized – my peer-reviewed sources were both published within the last three years).

I’ve been exploring the topic of the Richmond burial ground, which has been extremely interesting to me (horrible, obviously, but fascinating). The first source I chose was an autobiography of sorts written by Christopher McPherson, a free black clerk who lived in Richmond in the late 18th-early 19th centuries, and there’s a paragraph-long excerpt of his observations about the injustice of the burial ground that was quoted in our book. But it was so interesting to look at the full source and see that the burial ground is not the main focus at all – rather, the focus was on McPherson’s religious zeal and fervor, and how he viewed himself and his work of exposing injustices and remedying them as a proxy for God. He wrote letters to European royalty (English and German) and the Pope, and even met with President Madison once after Thomas Jefferson wrote McPherson a letter of introduction.

One thing that intrigued me while reading the book was the burial ground for African-Americans in Richmond. It’s a place where several very different things are put together in the context of a space – and they all play off of each other. First of all, there’s always something a little off-putting about a burial ground that is not meticulously kept – like a graveyard that has fallen into disrepair or an unmarked tombstone. There’s this sense that somehow, we’ve forgotten the dead, which is unsettling to us, because most cultures throughout the world take great care to ensure that doesn’t happen. But there was no care taken, no honoring the deceased, in the burial ground.

Second, the space was once considered sacred ground to African-Americans in Richmond. To be buried anonymously and callously in a space your ancestors once called sacred is different from being buried anonymously in just any space. To me, the history of a place qualifies the events that take place in that space in a new way. The history of a place means something.

And third, people weren’t just buried in the burial ground. Some were killed there – hanged on the city gallows. There’s a difference between standing in the spot where someone is buried and standing in the spot where someone died. And on top of all that, the graves where people were buried were often washed away by rainstorms (and their coffins washed into the James River). The people who are and were entombed in the burial ground were often forgotten in life, and now forgotten in death.

It feels like there’s a lot of “story” here.

(The source I found was the memoir-ish of Christopher McPherson, a free black clerk in Richmond, who described the burial ground in the book. There’s probably a lot I could learn from his collection of papers about general day-to-day life in Richmond as a person of color in the late 1700s and early 1800s, in addition to more details about the burial ground.)

I think it was interesting how little time, comparatively, Campbell spent writing about the actual Civil War itself. Maybe he felt that the time during the war wasn’t as important as the aftermath of the war, and how it affected racial tensions in Richmond. On paper, the major foundation of the Southern economy (slavery) had just been eliminated with the passage of the 13th Amendment, and society should have been in shambles after fighting and losing a war. Yet, there wasn’t a seismic shift in racial equality, and discrimination/segregation still occurred. Even vagrancy laws preserved elements of slavery in a post-Civil War society.

The imagery of a burning Richmond seemed very cinematic, in a way. Between the people drinking liquor from the gutters, troops evacuating the city, and the fire burning behind it all, it just feels like that was a moment where maybe the all of the underlying tensions of a city at war were unearthed and brought to light. The city, and the Confederacy as a whole, knew that they were on the brink of crumbling. I think the actions that people take in those kinds of situations can be very telling.

One thing that stuck with me was how the history of Virginia regarding slavery and the Civil War was rewritten to show the South in a more favorable light. I’ve learned about this a bit in a history class I took in high school. The teacher posed an interesting question – in what other war has the losing side been allowed to influence how the story of that war is told? History is written by the victors, except in the case of the American Civil War. In most wars, the losing side is eliminated entirely. But because the South was allowed in large part to retain its identity and culture even after rejoining the Union, it was able to erase parts of history and rewrite them to its advantage.

I was struck by the horrible conditions that were casually created for enslaved people to live in, especially Lumpkin’s Jail (the infamous “Devil’s Half Acre”). I can’t imagine going a day without a shower (sometimes two, depending) and a change of clothes, but enslaved “runaways” were left in such horrid conditions for such a long period of time – and that’s not even mentioning the food and water (in both cases, the lack thereof). How did these people ever survive? And for that matter, how did their tormentors ever justify their actions? Was it systematic and unfeeling? Probably, to some extent. Was it malicious? I don’t see how it couldn’t be, just a little bit. I will never understand how a human could treat another human like that and still believe they were in the right, nor do I ever want to. I’m getting tired of writing about atrocities – although those aren’t quite the right words. Maybe, rather, it takes its toll. But that’s why it’s so important, right? If I say, Oh, I’m getting tired of it, then maybe I’m contributing to the problem Campbell was talking about, where so much of the history surrounding slavery and atrocities has been forgotten or swept under the rug. If bringing that stuff out from under the rug means getting dust in our noses and eyes and sneezing for days, we can’t let that stop us. It’s too important. As the saying goes, there’s no growth in your comfort zone, and no comfort in your growth zone. So let’s grow, people! And if we’re uncomfortable along the way, good. I know for me, personally, as a relatively sheltered middle-class white girl, I could stand to be uncomfortable a little more often.

There were two specific details that I vividly remember having a visceral reaction to. The first was during the part about the Starving Time, where a man salted his wife and then ate her. And I remember thinking at the time, That’s the detail that’s going to stick with me. The second was after the author started to explore the colonists’ relationship with the native people. The systematic murder of a helpless prisoner and an entire family shocked me. And the primary source was so cavalier about it, so nonchalant. They pushed children into the water and then shot at them until they were dead. I’m not going to forget the specific phrasing of that action anytime soon, if ever. After I finished the first two chapters, I reflected on the details that had stood out to me, and I had to think for a while before I remembered the guy who ate his wife. The queasiness that I felt reading that was nothing compared to the absolute horror I felt reading about the casual murders of several innocent children.

I thought it was so interesting that the author mentioned Richmond being built on contradictions – a heretical religion, and even the idea of “discovering” a land that was already inhabited. Richmond was built to satisfy the dreams of greedy men living across an ocean, but that came at the price of innocent blood – a price the builders were all too happy to pay. There was a complete lack of empathy and emotion that was shocking to me. I can’t help but wonder how in the world English colonists were able to look at other human beings and commit such atrocities towards them without feeling any sort of remorse for their actions.

I  definitely enjoyed the lunch conversation we had with Dr. Coogan, Terence, and Kelvin. One thing that struck me, especially on the walk from the parking lot to the dining hall, was the easy camaraderie between all of them. The way that they all interacted with each other was very telling in that they treated each other like normal people. The moment when all of them started laughing about Stan as “the Preacher” felt so human. Also, like a lot of us, I think, I was struck by how real the stories in that book were. I knew – logically – that it was real, but seeing those guys in person really drove it home. Everything – every sad, wrong, or gut-wrenching thing – that they described in the book, whether about their lives or about the criminal justice system, exists in our real world. And I guess the moment we were able to actually lay eyes on them, there was absolutely no avoiding that anymore.

• What lasting impacts did jail have on you? I’ve heard it can be jarring to be back in the world after being released. Is that true in your experience? Is there a habit that you formed in jail that you continue to this day?
• What was the hardest part of being in jail? What kept you going throughout the experience (light at the end of the tunnel, etc.)?
• What’s something that you wish people would ask you when you come to places like this to talk about the book?
• What was your routine like inside jail? When did you have time to write/where did you usually write?
• How did you decide which stories to include in the book? Is there a story that’s not in the book that, looking back, you wish you could’ve fit in there?
• For Kelvin specifically: You said that, being the kind of person that you are, you shaped your world into what you thought you wanted it to be when you were younger. What world have you shaped for yourself now?
• For Terence specifically: You mention that being raised by your mother and your sisters, without a male authority figure, you felt like you were missing things that you would have benefited from learning from a father figure. But are there things you learned from your mother/sisters that you think you might not have learned otherwise? How close are you with your siblings today?

On a side note, I found a Terence quote that really resonated with me today: “There is something wonderful, blessed, blissful, almost surreal about the gift of youth. You notice, then you don’t notice. A problem can be there, confronting you, but there are big people dealing with it.” Well, like it or not, you guys, we’re right on the edge of that point in life. We’re living by ourselves, without our parents here to guide us or plan out our schedules. We’re being treated like adults, but, of course, we’re helped along by the fact that we have a dining hall, easily accessible laundry, don’t have to clean our own bathrooms, don’t have to pay rent, etc. And Terence, and Kelvin, and all of the others didn’t have those things to ease them into independent life. And they got thrown in at a much, much younger age. Honestly, I have so much respect for them because of their ability to survive in those conditions, to painstakingly carve out some sort of life for themselves, even if it led them to become involved in illegal activities. I feel a little bit overwhelmed here, in this little bubble of semi-adulthood; I know I wouldn’t have been able to survive in their circumstances. These guys have endured more than I could even imagine. And society looks down on them?? That just doesn’t make sense to me. Anyways. I guess it just got me thinking.