For 63-year-old Nanette Hunter, the fight over the Moses Macedonia African cemetery in Bethesda, Maryland, is a personal one.
Hunter is a direct descendant of people interred in the Maryland cemetery, a burial site used for formerly enslaved people. The site itself is buried by an apartment complex and parking lot and is embroiled in a legal battle that could have national implications.
She said that speaking at a rally timed for a critical court hearing last Monday to try to stop further development was a matter of representing her ancestors and others who could not speak for themselves.
“That’s something that I think about each time that we’re in court,” Hunter said. “I’m not just speaking for myself,” she added.
More than 100 people, including Hunter, gathered on Monday at the Maryland supreme court in Annapolis, about 30 miles outside Washington DC to sit in on testimony in the case concerning the sale of Westwood Tower in Bethesda, the apartment complex and parking lot that covers the old cemetery that dates back to the 1910s.
Holding signs with messages such as “Save Moses cemetery”, “Black ancestors matter” and “Fight for the ancestors”, demonstrators are campaigning to permanently halt the tower’s sale, which organizers say could lead to the desecration of the cemetery underneath if it goes ahead.
“We’ve come to the Maryland supreme court to emphatically state that Black bodies are not for sale,” the BACC president, Marsha Adebayo, said outside of the courthouse.
The coalition argues that the latest case could set a precedent for how property developers treat Black burial grounds – not just in Bethesda or Maryland but the entire US – especially amid a growing movement to preserve such sacred land.
Adebayo warned that it could be “open season” on Black burial grounds if the court rules against the organizers.
“That will signal to the developer-industrial complex that the law does not respect Black burial grounds, that Black people are still not considered human,” Adebayo said.
The fight to preserve Moses Macedonia African cemetery dates back nearly a decade. Over the years, developers have tried to build several additional structures atop the burial ground, including a parking garage and a storage facility, the Washington Post reported in 2021.
The owner of the site is the Montgomery county housing opportunities commission (HOC), the county where Bethesda is located.
The HOC, which owns the complex, originally attempted to sell the building to private developers in a $51m deal in July 2021, without prior court approval.
Members of the coalition opposing such sales have argued that the remains of more than 200 people are buried in the cemetery, and that efforts to sell the land violate a Maryland statute that requires court approval before selling certain types of burial grounds.
Demonstrators also say the risk of further development on the land is an additional desecration of a Black burial site.
Currently, there are no visible signs indicating that there is a cemetery under the apartment complex and parking lot.
The burial site was paved over in 1950s.
A 2017 archeological study found that the burial site was probably intact under the concrete and recommended no future disturbances be made to the land.
In 2021, a judge blocked the $51m sale until litigation involving the apartment complex was resolved. But in 2023, a Maryland appeals court ruled that the HOC could move ahead with the sale, a decision opposed by the coalition, which mostly includes descendants of those buried.
For organizers, the latest trial represents more than the ongoing property dispute.
It is also about further gentrification of Bethesda, especially as similar examples of displacement occur across the US.
“I’ve seen it more often than I would have liked to in my 63 years because it’s happened many places all over the county,” Hunter said, adding that in her observation white developers were trying to “erase any existence of people that were there”.
In addition to being a burial ground, the cemetery is what remains of Bethesda’s River Road community, a historically Black area that was overtaken by white developers in the 1960s.
Harvey Matthews Sr was raised in River Road and spoke at Monday’s rally. Now in his late 70s, Matthews said he calls River Road the “Lost Colony” after Black families were pushed out of the community.
“What once was there is gone,” he said.
Matthews remembers witnessing white developers “swindle” Black families out of their homes and lands.
He added that he witnessed members of the Ku Klux Klan beat his relatives in an attempt to intimidate Black families.
“I was young enough to have seen that and to have witnessed that,” Matthews said. “That’s why I can tell the story.”
Matthews and others say the fight for preservation is also about the lack of dignity given to Black people, including when they have died.
Olusegun Adebayo, a BACC member and pastor of the Macedonia Baptist church in Bethesda, said a ruling against organizers from the Maryland supreme court would be “devastating”.
“It would just be a terrible signal to indicate that our ancestors have no rights, and that they don’t have any dignity, even in death,” he said.
In response to ongoing litigation, HOC has said it “has no plans to disturb the land nor infringe upon the rights of its descendants” if the complex is sold, the Post reported.
But organizers believe that HOC and other developers can’t be trusted when it comes to preserving the land.
“We can’t look for them to have any conscience because their conscience is in their wallet,” Hunter said.
Following the hearing last Monday, a ruling is awaited. Organizers say that they are hopeful for a positive outcome and plan to continue to fight for the cemetery and for preservation of Black burial grounds regardless.
“Y’all done did it all over the country. But you oughta know, we not going down like that,” Matthews said, speaking of developers.
Marsha Adebayo, the BACC president, said the paving over of the burial site was a “barbaric” decision, one that had been “traumatizing” for the community.
“Every day, you have 50, 60 cars parking on top of these bodies,” Adebayo said.
But Adebayo said she hoped the court would prevent future desecration.
“The challenge before the court now is to roll back these centuries of disrespect of Black people,” she said. “We have to turn a corner and begin to respect human life and human beings and to see this area as sacred spaces.”
