APPENDIX A
AFRICAN AMERICAN CEMETERIES:
A WORLD APART

       African American burial customs had not been previously investigated in the Boonslick and even the genealogical data from Boonslick African American cemeteries had not been recorded in many instances.  An immediate problem when dealing with these burial places is the lack of written documentation and the continual loss of African American families to urban areas, making it difficult to find those who truly know the layout of these cemeteries.  Hence, genealogical societies in the past have found it easier to delete this group.

     Arriving in the Boonslick region as slaves brought by the white, English settlers, this group obviously lacked the freedom of choice available to the other two ethnic groups, the Upland South, English settlers and the German immigrants.  An antebellum black death probably meant burial near the white cemetery in an unmarked grave, although a few graves were marked with stones.  No stones in burial grounds were found during the course of this survey inscribed with a single name that would indicate slave status, although it is definitely known that the stones in the Angell burial ground (B9) indicate deceased slaves and in adjacent Randolph County (which is outside the boundary of this particular survey), at least one private, family and community burial ground has fieldstone markers at the east end of the burial ground for slaves.¹  The Jewell cemetery (B37) also contains markers for deceased slaves, again without names.

     It was not until after the War Between the States with the accompanying freedom for slaves, that the African American community established cemeteries and separate churches.  As would be expected given the cultural bias of this Boonslick region, the land available to this group was the poorest, the most hilly, and least developed in all of the counties.  During the course of this cemetery survey, still a major characteristic of the African American cemetery is the difficulty of locating it and then driving to it.  Always isolated and usually on poorly maintained gravel roads, these cemeteries suffer from a lack of upkeep whether they are private, family and community related burial grounds, or larger church graveyards.  Of the 177 cemeteries surveyed, 31 or approximately 17.5% contained known and visible African American burials. These cemeteries are shown in Table 9.

TABLE 9
LOCATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN CEMETERIES

            County                          Name of Cemetery            Identification #

     Certainly, many African American isolated graves were missed during the course of this investigation because of vandalism to the graves and their neglect.  Perhaps other cemeteries had African American sections that are not apparent today.  An excellent example of this is Clark's Chapel United Methodist Church Graveyard (H57) discussed above in Chapter 3 on Church Graveyards.  No stones give the actual placement of the African American graves.²  Even the county highway maps do not feature numerous African American cemeteries.  Since the maps were done by field investigators driving the roads, if there were not upright, large tombstones that were visible from a distance, the investigator probably never realized a cemetery was nearby.

     Of these African American cemeteries, fifteen are in Boone County, five in Cooper County, and eleven in Howard County.  Not all of these cemeteries are completely African American.  Some cemeteries had segregated sections for African American burials with the implementation of segregation practices throughout the South.  Cultural traditions sometimes die hard.  An anecdote tells the pervasive, segregationist attitude that permeated African American burial sites as late as the 1960's.  On Memorial Day 1967, Frances Harshbarger had her granddaughter drive her to the Centralia Cemetery (B2) to help decorate the graves.  Frances had numerous stops to make in the cemetery and eventually she instructed the granddaughter to take a wreath to the grave of her maternal grandparents located in the southern half of the cemetery.  Being a typical teen, the granddaughter promptly forgot Frances' directions and was unable to locate the gravestone.  Continuing to wander ever southward, she crossed several graveled driveways and finally arrived in the very southeastern section of the cemetery.  Hearing the sound of a car, the teen raised her head to find a furious grandmother frantically driving to this section.  Frances was absolutely livid!  She was not angry because her grandparents' gravestone had not been found, but because the teenaged granddaughter had unknowingly wandered into the segregated portion of the cemetery.  Frances was upset that her grandparents would ever be sought in that section of the grounds and by her own granddaughter no less.  If such a mistake had to happen, it most certainly should not happen on Memorial Day when other families were present!  Descended from a Southern family and the daughter-in-law of a Confederate veteran, Frances taught Sunday School for 50 years, but this indignity by an immediate family member was too much to bear.  The granddaughter never forgot the lecture because it was the only time in her life that her grandmother ever spoke so sharply to her.³

     Even in 1988, the Fayette Municipal Cemetery (H64) does not mow the segregated African American section of the cemetery (Illustration 320).  Only the front portion next to Missouri Highway 124 is mowed and this was only begun in 1983 after Pan Howell, the wife of the President of Central Methodist College, complained to City officials that this lack of care at the entrance to the small community was causing recruiting harm to the private, liberal arts college, the largest employer in the town.⁴  So now that part seen from the road is mowed.  Washington Cemetery at Glasgow (H47) still has a separate fence between the African American and white sections of the cemetery.  The Columbia Cemetery in Columbia (B38) and Sunset Hills Cemetery in Boonville (C9) are two other examples of municipal cemeteries that have served the African American population of towns since the days of segregation.  As explained above in Chapter 5 in the discussion of Walnut Grove Cemetery in Boonville (C10), that cemetery never ruled that African Americans could not be buried on the grounds, but the price of a lot in Walnut Grove discouraged an economic group that had little discretionary income, so no African Americans have been buried there.⁵

     The main characteristics of African American cemeteries in the Boonslick that are not in separate sections of municipal cemeteries (where conformation to the general rules are a necessity) are:

1.  Small or non existent gravestones.  Those that exist are often locally produced by untrained carvers,  even the segregated sections of municipal cemeteries contain fewer gravestones.

2.  Lack of grave vaults so that the grounds are very irregular.

3.  Plantings on top of the graves conforming to the length of the burial.

4.  Items placed on top of the grave.  This is especially true for plastic flowers that can sometimes totally cover the grave.  Other items include shell and baskets.

5.  Usually, there is some sort of picnic shelter with a  barbecue pit.

6.  A sense of isolation.  A rural location heightens this feeling and often the cemetery is found without an adjacent church.

7.  Shells, although this motif also is extensively used in strictly white cemeteries as well so alone it is not  an indicator.

     Typical markers found in these African American cemeteries are from Cemetery H27.  The name of this graveyard is unknown.  The marker to James Archie Jackson who died in 1980 is later than the period of this study, but it is the best one to show a type of locally produced gravestone (Illustration 321).  The smallest possible stone has been purchased.  It is set into a concrete platform that elevates the entire monument to a height not possible if only the actual stone were used, and then embellished with shells.  Immediately adjacent is the memorial marker to Archie Jackson who died in 1973 at age 102 (Illustration 322).  Here the marker commonly used by funeral homes in the Boonslick in the 1970's, has been set into concrete with two shells embedded at the top of the marker.  In Sunset Hills Cemetery in Boonville (C9), on the gravestone that commemorates Thornton Meils, when the carver ran out of space, the inscription continued on the next line, so it read that Thorton Meils was "aged a (next line) bout 100 years" (Illustration 323).

     The lack of grave vaults is also typical of these cemeteries. If there is a cultural reason, it has not emerged during the course of this survey.  State law does not require vaulting, rather it is standard cemetery policy done to maintain an even surface for mowing and walking.⁶  The lack of vaults means that the ground in an African American cemetery is very uneven.  Cemetery H80 is an typical example of this characteristic.  In this cemetery, most of the graves can be identified by the sunken ground rather than by gravestones or plantings.  Mt. Celestial Baptist Church Graveyard (B46) has graves behind the church going up the bluff so that terracing has been necessary in order to have enough flat width for burial.  This graveyard is unique in the Boonslick.

     Plantings are important in African American cemeteries.  They were also important in the other cemeteries of the Boonslick until the advent of the lawn mower when the memorial park ideal took hold and cemeteries were supposed to be cropped and trimmed like a lawn.  Since these African American cemeteries were not affected by this cultural change, they retain the best examples of plantings, sometimes to the point of totally obscuring small gravestones.  Log Providence Missionary Baptist Church Graveyard (B57) contains the largest number of plantings.  Located midway between Columbia and Ashland in southern Boone County, most of the members of this congregation now live in either Columbia or Jefferson City, but return for Memorial Day.  Many have their cemetery plots in the towns where they now live, but bring their families back to see where their ancestors are buried.  Most of these ancestors lie in unmarked graves or graves highlighted by plain river stones so that oral tradition is the only method of identification.⁷  The extant plantings are the standard Boonslick vegetation of cedar, peonies, iris and yuccas.  Cemetery literature mentions lilies as standard features of Upland Southern cemeteries in the Carolinas and Texas.  Since the survey was conducted in the fall of 1988, any spring bulbs had long since gone dormant and may or may not be part of these cemeteries.

     From a visual perspective today, the first sign of an African American cemetery is the abundance of bright, plastic memorial wreaths that sometimes totally cover a grave.  This contrasts with the comparative restraint of other cemeteries of the Boonslick region where the wreaths are either removed several weeks after Memorial Day for ease of mowing, or are the type of wreath that clamps onto the top of the tombstone so that most tombstones feature one wreath.  At Mt. Celestial Baptist Church Graveyard (B46), the terraced graves often have several wreaths at the head, perhaps even piled.  Many of these wreaths are made of bright, plastic flowers on a wooden cross.  This type of commemorative wreath is the cheapest to purchase, so economic reasons probably enter into consideration.  In all cases, however, the wreaths contained the brightest primary colors possible to acquire, a cultural choice.

     Barbecue pits and picnic shelter houses were usually located between the church and the cemetery. these recreational areas also can easily serve as shelters for eating purposes during work days of Homecomings at the cemetery, and may have been built as such.  Certainly, the idea of a Homecoming celebration is still a vital reality to the African American community in the Boonslick.  In Boonville, Homecoming is associated with the so-called Emancipation Day Celebration and is held the first weekend in August in the public park rather than at an African American church.  This is done to avoid conflicts and favoritism displayed when using churches.  People return to the town for family reunions which include cemetery visits and then eat and party.  Other Boonslick towns have similar types of celebrations, the size and regularity depending upon the size of the African American population in the community.⁸

     This idea of a separate celebration also remains in African American funerals in the Boonslick.  Funeral homes in 1989 remain segregated with both Boone and Cooper counties having African American funeral homes patronized by this group.  Howard County lacks such a facility due to population size so Howard County residents patronize the Cooper County funeral home located in Boonville, H. T. May and Sons.  Boone County residents use the Parker Funeral Home on Fourth Street in Columbia.⁹

     Several cemeteries appear to have been started by the white, southern settlers and were connected to a church, but are now used solely for African American burials.  An example of this is Mt. Nebo Cemetery (B45) which has typical marble gravestones from the 1850's and 1860's of a price that was available only to middle class buyers.  From about the beginning of the twentieth century, this cemetery contains gravestones of a much smaller size with perennials planted near them.  The cemetery in the late 1980's with African American burials were remote, with a real sense of visual and cultural isolation that is hard to document.
 
    Shells are not exclusive or specific to Boonslick African American cemeteries.  The shell motif has been discussed above in Chapter 1 on the general characteristics of Boonslick cemeteries.  Shells are found in most of the cemeteries of the region, and racial or sexual characteristics do not appear to have any correlation.  Thus, Log Providence Missionary Baptist Graveyard (B57) has no shells even though it is exclusively an African American cemetery while Boonsboro (Disciples of Christ) Christian Church Graveyard (H54) has only white burials and is filled with shells.  In both groups, shells were sometimes embedded into the actual gravestone, although this practice was more widespread among the African American burials.

     No separate African American cemeteries have been established in the Boonslick since the turn of the century.  Those that remain in active use were started prior to that time.  The reason for their demise is perpetual care which came into standard usage at the end of the nineteenth century.  The promise that graves would be maintained even when the family died or moved from the area was quickly adopted by all segments of Boonslick society and municipal cemeteries which most often featured this type of maintenance became the main places of burial.  Perpetual care was viewed as progress and as a sample of American society moving confidently and eagerly forward to the future even though these municipal cemeteries were segregated.¹⁰  In the process, the older African American cemeteries were quickly forgotten and neglected.

ENDNOTES

   ¹Survey of the William Perkins family burial ground in Randolph County, near Rennick, Missouri, now in possession of Maryellen H. McVicker of Boonville who conducted the survey in the summer of 1972.

   ²Interview with Mrs. Virginia (Jinny) Yager, chairman of the Clark's Chapel Administrative Board, conducted on June 20, 1986.

   ³Family diary written by Maryellen H. McVicker and now in her possession in Boonville, Missouri.

   ⁴Interview with Pansy Gertrude Howell of Fayette, conducted on September 10, 1984.

   ⁵Interview with John Hulbert, superintendent of Walnut Grove Cemetery in Boonville, Missouri, on October 12, 1988.

    ⁶Ibid.

   ⁷Interview conducted at Jerry's Hair Design in Columbia, Missouri, with Zelma who assists Terry Robb, on January 21, 1989.

   ⁸Interview with Richard Brown of Boonville conducted on August 10, 1986.

   ⁹Interview with Steve Bruce of Boonville, Missouri, conducted on April 9, 1989.

   ^10Ibid.
 
 

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