- Hey, I'm Valerie June.

Coming up onReel South.

- It's clear that there are hundreds of slave cemeteries in most of our counties.

- [Valerie] Scattered across Virginia, historic African American grave sites have been long forgotten.

- [Crystal] I think it's important to know where you come from, good or bad, but I don't know it's a priority for a lot of people.

Kind of one of these things, either you care about it or you don't.

- [Valerie] Uncovering these cemeteries allows us to discover more than the past, an important step towards American reconciliation.

WitnessUnmarked, up next onReel South.

[laid-back southern music] [sizzling] [ethereal contemplative music] - I know many of us want to think that we're here and we just showed up one day.

But the reality is, and that's whether we're black community, Latino community, people of all walks of life, we stand on someone else's shoulders.

- I feel like people haven't wanted to discuss these histories because it's difficult.

It's not associated with power or happiness in a lot of ways.

To me, I still find the validity in it.

I think it's important, I think it's necessary to discuss it, good or bad.

And I think it's important to know where you come from, good or bad.

But I don't know that it's a priority for a lot of people, and it's one of these things.

Either you care about it or you don't.

Either it's important to you or it isn't.

- I remember growing up in a predominantly white environment where I was literally the only black child in my grade.

And when conversations of slavery came up, I remember feeling shame and embarrassment.

Part of it was because I don't think I understood that in that condition that there was contribution, and that was not part of the narrative or part of the textbook in the 80s when I was sitting in social studies class.

- You can easily look at textbooks in Virginia from 100 years ago, and what they were teaching kids, black and white, about African American history, and of course I think most of us would be absolutely appalled what the books a century ago were teaching people about black history in Virginia.

And so while I think, on one hand, we've certainly improved significantly since then, there's still so much of the story that hasn't been told.

- A lot of people wanna forget the past rather than know the past.

How can you know how far you have been since you don't know where you come from?

[slow thumping melancholy music with humming] [birds chirping] - I found my first cemetery in 2010.

I was looking around for what's out there from the past.

[bird cawing] - A lot of times, people ask me how many slave cemeteries are there in Virginia?

Well, no one can answer that question yet, but from preliminary research that I did in just a handful of counties in Virginia, it's clear that there are hundreds of slave cemeteries in most of our counties.

[slow melancholy music] - The large one that I found last fall had been hidden in plain view my entire life.

I got married in the church that's right above it, and I had no idea that there was a cemetery there.

I had grown up in that church, and I just had no clue.

And I almost felt it to be sad.

All of this, they're buried.

There's no way to know.

- [Man] So we're walking on - Yes.

- bodies right now?

- Yes.

- Wow.

- Sweet Briar's what they all knew.

It provided a life for them that they may not have had otherwise or may have had no other option for means of employment and taking care of their families.

This is a sacred space.

[chuckles] The community is that this is all connected to something bigger.

- When many of these slave burials actually took place, they happened at night.

They had ceremonies that were done very much in the dark.

And so can you imagine being at the top of a mountain or top of a hill trying to bury a loved one, and you don't even know where one person is from the next?

They knew who all of those bodies were and who was buried next to whom.

That's why they could have children buried next to parents.

That's why they could have husbands buried next to wives.

And so it's really powerful when you think about the fact that, even without having official markings carved into those stones, they knew who was where.

- This is an outdoor archive.

This is where one will find records of people who may not have been recorded in other places.

- It's a stroll not just then through the past but a stroll that can provoke questions about our future and where we're headed and our attitudes about the family or religion and, of course, at the end of the day, death.

- I recall a message that one young man gave me.

They dead, and I can't do nothing about it.

Why should I worry about it?

Graves is a place of honor, and that's the only way you can really know your history if we can follow the graves.

But if we don't have no concern about the graves, then we lose our history.

- Well, I know my family history definitely began as folklore.

I remember being 12 and driving past the gates of Sweet Briar College and knowing that there was some connection but not really knowing exactly what the connection was.

- That's the reality of the history of slavery in this country.

People are still living in communities not too far away from where they were maybe enslaved, and they're also keeping the last names of those people that may have enslavers.

I don't think that that's something that isn't common, and I think that anyone that goes in search of it will probably find it within their own pasts.

- So Sweet Briar, on one hand, is very typical, a large plantation, antebellum plantation that relied on the labor of enslaved individuals.

These people are founders of the plantation, of the college.

Their labor was always outnumbering that of any white contribution.

And in fact, roughly, the ratio would be, say, for 1850 here on this plantation, at that point, there would've plus or minus six white Fletchers and, at that point, about 98 enslaved African and Monacan individuals.

Well, there are multiple reasons why it matters and multiple reasons, especially as a white academic doing this that I would feel bound to connect with descendants and hear their family stories, their perspective on this history so that it's not just me reading a documentary in an archive and making my own interpretations.

- It's a very interesting relationship that we have to the college because of that relationship.

And being able to document that is possibly a rarity, and we're seeing more and more of that as many institutions are beginning to look through their records to try to find out what they have in their documents about slavery.

I think that the history of Africans in America had been told in a lot of different ways.

I think that there's more to be told.

I think that stories like ours as the Fletchers, that become more formalized now because of the corroborating evidence, that we're finding in places like colleges and in former plantations.

When you're able to find that information and document it, it becomes really essential to not only the kin but to American history.

[birds chirping] - Think there's always been this really undying love for this place.

There are aspects of this that are difficult to hear about, but I think that they took something out of it.

Even sitting here and looking at these bricks, there's a lot of history in each one of them.

Someone made hand by hand to build these buildings.

[gentle acoustic guitar music] - We had been told by friends that there was a huge abandoned African American cemetery in their neighborhood.

We rolled through here when this area was still pretty densely forested.

I didn't see anything, but my wife Erin, who has some kind of special super vision, spotted headstones in here.

She's discovered over 600 headstones.

I have discovered upwards of maybe 20.

Until you do that yourself, you don't understand how powerful it is viscerally.

You are reclaiming history with your hands, and that, to me, is a pretty special thing.

- This has actually been a passion since the 90s.

It was very overwhelming because the cemetery had been abandoned and neglected for so many years.

A cemetery that you've had iconic African American leaders who were tremendous contributors to the history of Virginia.

You had those who were served in arms services, revolutionary and confederate wars.

You had people who were just everyday citizens who were buried in this particular cemetery.

There's many families who have gone on and have lost connection with who's here and what their connection is with this particular cemetery.

- There have been several cleanup efforts at Evergreen that have started and stopped, and some of them have been really robust.

The problem with that is, until you get an institution or the government to back you up, you can only maintain a private effort for so long.

- Started out helping as a volunteer.

Tried to get groups to come on out.

It was hit or miss.

Sometimes, I'd be the only one out here, and other times we'd have a bunch of people out.

[ethereal dramatic music] - I like it when people get down to the roots, peel back the vines, tear up the roots.

If you find a buried headstone, try and dig it out without damaging the headstone.

I've seen people use the headstone as a lever for the shovel, and that's crazy.

But it's not crazy unless you understand what these things are.

These are one of a kind historical artifacts, and if you destroy them, if you crack them, that's it.

They're irreplaceable.

First year we were out here, I would feel, at times, overwhelmed and discouraged, like this is never gonna get done.

It's too much.

16 acres here, 60 acres there.

That feeling never evaporates because it is a huge task, but it is replaced by that incredible joy of finding someone's relative and then being able to learn something about that person and to realize we're rebuilding a community's history.

So it feels great, and it roots us to this place.

- What motivates me is the fact that, when I came out here, these are my ancestors laying out here.

When I see trees, it's large growing over the top of them, if that don't motivate a person to get out of bed - That's right.

- in the morning, - They come out.

- you don't have a heart.

- Gotta be in your heart to actually come out here and wanna do stuff like this.

I've had probably three family members that's got family out here that have come over there, and they can find the graves.

And they have actually cried to be able to get to their where their grandparents, mother, father, whatever.

- All of these people that's out here now in the cemetery was a part of their life and a part of somebody's life, and it's part of the history.

So when you connect all that together, although they are not still living anymore, they still live in your heart.

[light poignant music] - I must say, we here to stay.

We gonna get this done.

Might take us a couple of years, but we'll get it.

[slow contemplative music] - [Boy] Grandma, what's this?

- That's Uncle Harold.

- Oh.

- That's Betty Jean and Harold's father.

Remember the man we went to his funeral?

I mean we went to his wedding?

- [Boy] Yeah.

- That's his father.

But my family used to keep our plot clean.

My uncle did, actually.

So his parents are out here and his two brothers, and so he got elderly and couldn't keep it cleaned up.

But the rest of the common areas have become so overgrown that you couldn't drive in.

- When I was a kid, man, when I was their age, it was so filled with brush and greenery that you couldn't see through here like this.

So there's been a great deal of work that's done.

But obviously, with this situation, perpetual care, if it's not there, [chuckles] it's gonna happen again.

- We tried to meet with city representatives, and the city of Richmond said it was in the county, and Henrico County said no, it's not our responsibility.

It's in the city.

And so we were never really able to get the governmental support that was needed.

And as an African American from Richmond, Virginia, it would make me sick to my stomach when I would come out here with my family, bag up trash, clean off, and then we would drive out, make a left, and drive past the confederate cemeteries that was just manicured and beautiful all the time.

It was just such a huge disparity visually.

This has been a legacy of racism, disenfranchisement, and disinvestment.

[muffled speaking] Everybody I see out here today I just thank them personally for coming out and being here because it's gonna take this kind of community effort to get the first cleanup done and then, prayerfully, that it can be maintained once it's been reclaimed 'cause right now, we're still reclaiming it.

There's a whole huge other section that we haven't touched yet.

- No matter what you're advocating for, you're gonna be an ambulance chaser until you affect policy.

And so we have a list of endangered African American sites, cemeteries, historic properties, schools, that we are trying to preserve.

And what we're trying to do is affect policy and work with the county so that we can know about projects when they first come on radar to the county.

[gentle poignant music] - The support was overwhelming, and I myself am still a little surprised by it but elated.

Support came from the House and the Senate.

It extended way beyond the general assembly.

The press was calling, wanting to help unfold this story and wanted to make sure that communities were aware, America was aware, Commonwealth was aware.

These cemeteries that needed attention and that the state had finally stepped up to the plate to help address that.

This is the first time we're doing it for African American cemeteries, but it's already being done across the state of Virginia.

I'm hoping again that this open the door for places in Hampton, - Here we go.

- in Arlington, to now say we identify this.

We wanna add that to the list of cemeteries that are being addressed.

- Here we are, and it is tremendous.

It's the money, but it's that commitment from the state, the state saying these places have value, not just to black people, to Richmond, to the nation.

This is our history, it's our collective history.

So that feels amazing.

- People who are engaged in this, I think they're here because they understand that this a part of bringing balance to the history for the state of Virginia.

- There's a lot more graves here than anybody really knew about, and it doesn't appear that all of 'em were even marked.

Some of 'em were, but the stones are buried.

Some of the stones were barely visible, and what we're discovering is this was a lot bigger than anybody ever knew.

[light poignant music] It's only been in the last 30 years that the park service has even openly and genuinely wanted to explore these other topics.

We've been able to follow up with funding from the parks friends group, The Appomattox 1865 Foundation.

They put up the money for us to do some ground-penetrating radar research in an area that has been known through oral history to be possibly a large slave burial ground.

It's just only recently has the park service really been trying to dig into that, learn more about it, where are they, can they be found, what do we know of them.

- Cemeteries for me are always a window into all these individuals and then, of course, by inference or by pulling together data from the epitaphs, their biographical information, you can start getting at some of their stories and their contributions.

I still think there's a tremendous amount more that all of us could learn about the contributions of African Americans, the role of black families, and how it's changed over the different generations.

[motor rumbling] [shovel scraping dirt] - The restoration work that we've done here at Monticello has allowed descendants of the enslaved community, through getting word, to experience this history in a much more real way.

I hope they're able to see the contrast between the lives that the people who lived and worked and built this place lived in contrast with Jefferson and the grandeur of his lifestyle.

- Because I feel that we are not history conscious enough as a society, and that is, in many ways, a major contributor to the ongoing issues that we have with race and class in this country today 'cause we have a tendency to just operate as though the present is just what it is, and the present is most definitely built on a documented past that we need to understand if we're going to have any kind of agency over the future.

- [Niya] And I hope that when people come here and see these new spaces that we've opened, I hope that they're able to understand a little bit about American identity and how race has come to play such a big part of this world that we live in.

[insects chirping] [slow poignant music] [slow rousing music] - There's a iconic photo, I guess, of myself hugging my son.

He had come up to me as we were going around, and he said, well, Mommy, if this is a cemetery, how come there's no names?

And I could not even really get it out because I was so overwhelmed with emotion.

When your child is asking you a question, and you're trying to explain, and he's saying, he's basically asking why is there this injustice, that's what my child was asking me.

When he looked around, he wanted to know why do we see this injustice here and not in a regular cemetery?

And so I thought it was a really powerful moment as a mother to have to explain to him more about our family's history and how we got here.

- For my girls, I think that it has had a profound impact on them, and it may be more relevant to them later as they continue to grow up.

But I've already laid this foundation of what I've found out already.

And I'm very happy about I've been able to go through this process with them as they've been growing up because it gives them a greater sense of self.

I know it's done that for me.

- When our eyes are open to all of these contributions that people have made, then I believe there's a level of appreciation for people, what they had to endure, what they went through, and the fact that all of us are not necessarily standing on the same level playing field because there was an effort was made to keep some behind and move others forward.

Well, it is in the best interests of everyone for all of us to understand one another's contribution, and I think that gives you a new profound appreciation for people, regardless who they are, and again for their contribution.

- For me, this value for slave cemeteries and knowledge that comes from them, this connection to the college is a way of replacing that shame that I grew up with with pride, really, for the contribution because I didn't see it that way until I started exploring it.

So while it's unfortunate that I came to that in my 30s, I'm still very thankful because I know that my children will not grow up with that same sense of shame when the topic of slavery is discussed.

At least my goal is that they don't feel that or they have something to balance it with, at the very least, if they do feel that, that they can say well, let me pull up this website for you.

Sweet Briar College in Amherst, Virginia.

Let me show you the proof of my ancestors' work.

It's here, and it's alive, and it continues.

- There's a lot of power in knowing where you come from when you know who you are and where you come from, good or bad.

Your sense of self is a lot different than those who don't, and for my girls, they're biracial.

To give this piece of history to them and say this is where we come from.

This is who our people are.

- And somehow, when you know where you come from, you know who you are, and no one else can take that away from you, and that's a powerful moment.

And I think that's the blessing of being a Fletcher is that we always know who we are.

We always know how to stand on our own two feet, and nothing makes us run 'cause we know where we come from.

♪ We won't keep you down anymore ♪ ♪ 'Cause your sons are part of why we free ♪ ♪ You sacrificed everything for the people ♪ ♪ Who never spared you anything ♪ ♪ Unmarked you won't remain 'cause the world needs ♪ ♪ To know your name [song fades] [upbeat southern country music] ♪