Black Bodies Are NOT For Sale: Battle to Save Black Cemeteries From Development

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‘Black Bodies Are NOT For Sale’: The Battle Over An African American Cemetery

There’s a Growing Movement Across America to Save Black Cemeteries From Further Development

Activists fight to stop further development on historic Maryland burial site beneath an apartment complex

The Guardian 14 JAN 2024





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.






Lost African American cemetery with over 120 coffins found under apartment complex



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.

MORE; Court battle over apartments built on African American ...



Saving Black Cemeteries