African American Burial Ground facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

The African American Burial Ground is a historic cemetery for the enslaved, located in Ashburn, Virginia, off Harry Byrd Highway (Virginia State Route 7) in Loudoun County, Virginia. Most of the enslaved buried there were from nearby Belmont Plantation.

The abandoned site was rediscovered in 2015 by Rev. Michelle Thomas, in 2019 president of the local NAACP chapter. That year, Governor Ralph Northam appointed her to the Commission on African American History Education in the Commonwealth.

In 2017 the real estate developer Toll Brothers, which owned the land, donated 2.75 acres (1.11 ha) to a new Loudoun Freedom Center. In 2021, it agreed to donate an additional 4 acres (1.6 ha), which will be used to re-create a schoolhouse and other structures used by enslaved people.

There are also to be a columbarium and a scatter garden, where people can scatter ashes of their loved ones. In 2020 Michelle Thomas buried the first free Black in the cemetery: her 16-year-old son, dead of drowning.

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