What It Means to Bury My Ancestors Twice |
My ancestors are buried at Oak Hill Plantation in Pittsylvania County, Virginia—sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and formerly enslaved people whose labor built wealth they never inherited. When they died, they were granted only conditional respect. In life and in death, they were treated as less than fully human.
That logic is as old as the nation itself. In 1787, at the Constitutional Convention, lawmakers seeking to preserve Southern political power adopted the Three-Fifths Compromise, allowing enslavers to count three-fifths of their enslaved population for purposes of taxation and representation. The clause acknowledged a measure of humanity while denying its fullness, codifying inequity into the nation’s founding document.
More than a century later, even after emancipation, that idea still shaped how my ancestors were laid to rest.
When I began researching my oldest known ancestor Flem Adams, Sr.—who was born enslaved around 1830—I discovered his death certificate listed Oak Hill as his burial site, but the property was so vast I had no idea where to begin searching. After talking with family members, they mentioned that we had other relatives buried there as well, but they also didn’t know exactly where to look to find our relatives.
Two Black cemeteries on the Oak Hill property, both containing members of my family, were recently slated for relocation to make way for economic development. At first, I tried to believe something good might come of it. Perhaps, through this process and the DNA testing of the remains, we could finally bring our ancestors’ stories to light. Maybe we could even trace where they came from in West Africa.
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The two graveyards rest on land that was once part of one of over 50 plantations owned by the white Hairston family across........