Synopsis:

THE STORY OF LOVE
While China Galland was visiting family in rural East Texas, she learned of Love Cemetery-a nearly 175-year-old African American burial ground-from the cemetery guardian, Mrs. Nuthel Britton. For forty years, Love Cemetery was inaccessible, starting with a lockout at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. Galland's ensuing response to aid in Mrs. Britton's quest to reclaim the ground and return access to the descendants of the buried unearths racial wounds that have never completely healed.

A story of tremendous hope, LOVE CEMETERY: Unburying the Secret History of Slaves (HarperOne; June 2008; Paperback; $14.95) serves as a model for countrywide racial reconciliation. As this racially mixed community pulls together for a cause, they discover each other's common dignity and realize that death is the great leveler-and so is love.

Write a Review »

Author Comment:

UPDATE The story continues. In March, 2007, after working together for four years, restoring the cemetery, and reconsecrating the burial ground, the organizing members of the community were informed that Love Cemetery had once again been locked up tight, this time by a local timber company demanding $1,000,000 of liability insurance. Love remains locked today. The original publication of LOVE CEMETERY raised enough awareness for a state investigation, and now, a public hearing about the current lockout of the African American descendents from Love Cemetery. Meanwhile, stories of lockouts in Texas grow. In South Texas, an African American descendent watched a nearby white landowner drive a road-grader over his family’s burial ground. His great-great-grandfather, whose grave lies there, arrived in chains from Africa on the last trans-Atlantic slave shipment to Texas. He died a proud black farmer, owning fifty-three acres that he carefully passed down to his family. At least 10 acres of the original 53 have been “lost.” Access to these historic African American cemeteries and others around the state remains contested. What’s happening in Texas is emblematic. The dead are being cut off and paved over all across the U.S., especially rural black cemeteries. With them goes a history that was left out of schoolbooks, a past we have yet to learn, no matter what our backgrounds. The story of this East Texas, 175 year-old African American burial ground illuminates our complicated, buried past, showing how the slavery, theft, and genocide that settled this country shadow us today and haunts the American landscape.

Topics/Categories:

Cemeteries, funerals, Funerary Art, race in America, Slavery

Genre:

African-American History, African-American Studies - Interest, History, Narrative Nonfiction, Nonfiction, Race Relations

Type of Work:

Book

Publishers:

HarperOne

Purchase From:

Book Passage
Amazon
Local Independent Bookstore

Original Publish Date:

June 9, 1969

Formats:

Hardcover Paperback

• Share With:
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•