Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/12/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The next PO down the rode from Achilles is Bena, where resides the largest of the Black Baptist congregations in Gloucester. Its cemetery is much more recent than the one in Achilles, and none of the graves are capped, but it's also on marginally higher ground. At the same time, it was common around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries for Black families in the South to protect deceased members of their families from "nightriders," who exhumed recent corpses for the purpose of selling them to local proprietary medical schools. There's a rich African-American folkloric tradition associated with this practice, including at least one blues song. Families would counter the threat by keeping bodies aboveground until they were decomposed enough to render them unfit for use as anatomical cadavers, by guarding gravesites continuously until the same end was achieved, by decorating graves with various objects to 'protect' their contents, and by making it as difficult as possible to open the grave--which might include capping. The concrete and granite slabs that I observe here in Guinea would certainly require several men to move them. Cheers! Chandos -----Original Message----- From: lug-bounces+cmbrow=wm.edu@leica-users.org [mailto:lug-bounces+cmbrow=wm.edu@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Eric Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2004 10:56 AM To: lug@leica-users.org Subject: [Leica] Re: Achilles, Virginia now graves Craig: >Interesting. In northeastern North Carolina, there are concrete-capped >graves but they're invariably graves of African-Americans. Whites >never use the concrete capping... What's the significance of the concrete capping? Any idea why there's a difference in which races use 'em? Interesting. -- Eric http://canid.com/ _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information