"Why Slaves’ Graves Matter"

"Memorialization keeps us connected to what is most significant about those who are no longer with us. So what does it mean that the grave sites of countless enslaved Americans have not been afforded this recognition?

Since the emancipation of enslaved Americans, their public memory has become abstract. Cemeteries, graveyards and memorials are visual reminders for us. They exist because we desire to memorialize those buried there. By gracing the sacred spaces of enslaved Americans with that same intention, we can give humanity and dignity to their memory...

The burial grounds are often found incidentally by developers under parks and office buildings, and for many of the sites, oral history is their only source of documentation. (This was the case for my family as well. Grandpa Ben’s daughter, my great-aunt, directed me to his burial site before she died in 2014, at the age of 101.)

Equally distressing are the struggles to save burial grounds that are in danger of being lost. For example, a community in Shelby County, Ala., is trying to rescue a cemetery of enslaved Americans and their descendants from a quarry company that acquired the land it is on. In Queens, N.Y., a church congregation is seeking to reinter the remains of a 19th-century woman who was unearthed in 2011 by a developer digging in what turned out to be a burial ground founded by enslaved Americans.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/why-slaves-graves-matter.html?referer=

Note the phrase "enslaved Americans"; makes me think so many thoughts.

I wonder, if I went up to someone and asked them to tell me about a time when Americans were enslaved, would the centuries of chattel slavery come to mind, or would they first reach for some memory of cults or kidnapping and "white slavery" or, like, wage slavery or something...

FB: "Our country should explore ways to preserve the public memory of enslaved Americans. Their overlooked lives are an inextricable part of the historical narrative of our country — and not simply because they were the “beneficiaries” of the 13th Amendment. We should remember enslaved Americans for the same reason we remember anyone; because they were fathers, mothers, siblings and grandparents"