Are enslaved African Americans buried at Mount Harmon plantation? Space and reflection for national mourning and memorialising

ABSTRACT

Are plantations places where visitors can mourn enslaved Africans/African Americans? In this article, the author traces her time as the Historical Consultant on a project centred on a presumed graveyard for enslaved African Americans that brought forth disparate views and understandings on African American mourning and burial spaces. Over the course of the two-year research, what transpired was how the Friends of Mount Harmon (non-profit who took ownership of the property in 1997) grappled to reckon with their identity as a southern plantation and how this identity shaped and ultimately hindered a fuller more complex understanding of a graveyard for enslaved Africans/African Americans. Ultimately, the author describes the process of coming to understand the graveyard that also provided a new narrative of reimaging it as a site of mourning.

KEYWORDS:

• American plantation
• slavery
• African American
• graveyard
• Maryland
• colonial history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Please note that throughout the article the word “Black” will be capitalised whereas “white” will remain lowercase. The author has chosen to do so in accordance with the 2020 change by the vast majority of mainstream style guides, namely the Associated Press and the Chicago Manual of Style. For more, see “Why We’re Capitalising Black” by Nancy Coleman, July 2, 2020. “Black and White: A Matter of Capitalisation” Chicago Manual. June 22, 2020.

2. I met and talked with Bill and Kathryn Horne multiple times starting in 2018 through 2021. Bill Horne is his family’s genealogist and self-taught historian of Cecil County, Maryland history. His mother, Kathryn Horne, was born July 15, 1927 at Mount Harmon Plantation and believed to be the last living person who was born on the plantation. Source: oral history of Kathryn Horn conducted and written by Bill Horn entitled “Mom’s Long Mount Harmon Story”.

3. A “gain” is a function that attempts to equalise the amplitudes of all Ground Penetrating Radar signals.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kami Fletcher

Kami Fletcher is an Associate Professor of American & African American History and Co-Coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies at Albright College. She teaches courses that explores the African experience in America and unpacks social and cultural U.S. history, all at the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Her research centres on African American burial grounds, late 19^th/early 20^th century Black female and male undertakers, and contemporary Black grief and mourning. She also has authored essays published in edited volumes. She is the co-editor of Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed which examines the internal and/or external drives among ethnic, religious, and racial groups to separate their dead (University Press of Mississippi, April 2020).