Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Slave Cemetery


Early this afternoon, the Round Rock Cemetery looked like this. I walked around in it quite comfortably; the place was drenched in sunlight.



Three years ago, I strolled around the Round Rock Cemetery, and tried to get a few pictures in the Slave Cemetery. I found myself totally overcome with the heebie-jeebies, and unable to comfortably enter. The one picture I took from the very edge needed to be lightened considerably to be visible at all...I was there quite late in the day.

7 comments:

  1. it is sad seeing the sign that says
    "slave cemetery" as if that is all they were.

    i wish someone would put a dangling placard underneath that sign that says,
    "but they are truly free now."

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  2. echo. I find that sign very disturbing.

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  3. It is what it is. I would wish it were different. I would also like to see some amendment, and there is a historical sign nearby, which I will add. It is not quite so stark.

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  4. While living in Texas with my uncle in the mid-70's, I saw some shocking attitudes. I was in my teens. I wasn't allowed to date the one really great guy I met in school there because he was black. I also remember a lot of really awful racist comments and opinons about black and hispanic people uttered by my own relatives.

    I remember going with my uncle to visit an elderly black woman he'd known as a child. I can't remember what the exact relationship had been. We drove for a long time, and sort of out in the middle of nowhere there was a block of tiny shacks in major disrepair. My uncle told me it was some sort of Government housing. In her house, the toilet was smack in the middle of the main room, or the living room. It did have a curtain around it, but the idea that whoever "designed" these places must have decided the people who would live there didn't deserve any dignity in their surroundings.

    I remember being so upset that I cried on the way home from our visit to this wonderful, nice and generous woman. I know racism is everywhere, but I had never been exposed to it in such detail until I lived in Texas for those 3 years.

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  5. Very cool! I think we probably have some slave burial grounds here. We do have Indian mounds and at least one haunted cemetery.

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  6. There was and still is a lot of racism in Texas. It was less than 20 years ago when an African American friend of mine had to find a new sitter for her son, because the woman watching him had just acquired several Anglo kids, whose parents wanted her to ditch the AA kid. When I got all indignant about it, my friend looked at me and said, "Oh, Ronni! Don't be naive," and her expression was such a combination of exasperation and resignation that I never forgot it.

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