Are enslaved African Americans buried at Mount Harmon plantation? Space and reflection for national mourning and memorialising

Abstract

ABSTRACT Are plantations places where visitors can mourn enslaved Africans/African Americans? In this article, the author traces her time as the Historical Consultant on a project centred on a presumed graveyard for enslaved African Americans that brought forth disparate views and understandings on African American mourning and burial spaces. Over the course of the two-year research, what transpired was how the Friends of Mount Harmon (non-profit who took ownership of the property in 1997) grappled to reckon with their identity as a southern plantation and how this identity shaped and ultimately hindered a fuller more complex understanding of a graveyard for enslaved Africans/African Americans. Ultimately, the author describes the process of coming to understand the graveyard that also provided a new narrative of reimaging it as a site of mourning.