Ground-penetrating radar, oral history, and the slow work of restoring names to unmarked burials.
The Scale of the Problem
In the great majority of historic African American cemeteries, the visible marked stones represent only a fraction of the actual burials. Permanent stone monuments were expensive throughout the period in which most historic Black cemeteries were active, and in many cases the families of the deceased could afford only a wooden marker, a fieldstone, or no marker at all. Wooden markers decayed within a generation; fieldstones were displaced by frost, animals, vegetation, or the labor of mowing crews who did not recognize them as markers. The result is that many historic Black cemeteries today contain hundreds or thousands of unmarked burials, the locations of which are no longer documented.
Ground-Penetrating Radar
Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has emerged in the past two decades as the most useful technology for the non-invasive identification of unmarked graves. A GPR survey involves the systematic traversal of the cemetery surface with a radar unit that detects subsurface anomalies consistent with grave shafts. A skilled operator can produce a map of probable grave locations across an entire cemetery in a few days of fieldwork. GPR cannot identify the persons buried, but it can establish that burials are present and can guide subsequent decisions about marker placement, perimeter fencing, and site protection. The cost of a GPR survey for a small to mid-sized cemetery is typically in the range of a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of dollars; several preservation grant programs now specifically support GPR surveys of historic Black cemeteries.
Oral History
The most important resource for restoring names to unmarked burials is the oral history of the descendant community. Even at sites where formal records are entirely lost, surviving descendants frequently retain detailed knowledge of which family members are buried where, often passed down across three or four generations through the practice of regular cemetery visitation and grave decoration. Capturing this knowledge through systematic oral history interviewing — before the generation that holds it has passed — is one of the most urgent tasks in African American cemetery preservation today. Several historically Black college archives, regional folklore institutions, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture support oral history projects of this kind.
Documentary Research
Documentary research can also recover the names associated with unmarked burials. Church burial registers, mutual aid society records, mortuary records, county death certificates (where they survive), newspaper obituaries (including those published in historic Black newspapers such as the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Baltimore Afro-American, and dozens of regional Black weeklies), funeral programs, family Bibles, and Freedmen's Bureau records all contribute fragments of the historical record. The painstaking work of cross-referencing these sources can sometimes reconstruct the burial population of a historic cemetery with remarkable completeness.
Marking Recovered Graves
The decision about how to mark recovered graves is a delicate one. Some descendant communities prefer to install individual markers naming each identified person, often funded through grant programs or community fundraisers. Others prefer collective memorials — a single monument bearing all known names, or a memorial wall — particularly when individual identification is uncertain. Still others prefer that recovered grave locations be documented in archival records but not physically marked, on the ground that the dignity of the dead does not require visible monumentation. There is no single correct approach; the appropriate decision is one to be made by the descendant community in consultation with preservation professionals.
The Wider Significance
The recovery of unmarked graves at historic African American cemeteries is part of a broader project of historical recovery in which the lives systematically excluded from the formal documentary record of the United States are reasserted as members of the historical community. Each restored name is a small act of restitution against the historic violence of erasure. The work is slow, technical, often physically and emotionally demanding, but it is among the most meaningful forms of historical labor being undertaken in this country today.