In retirement my parents moved to a newish housing development you can only reach by driving along a wooded, winding country road named after a family of early white settlers. Conway Road rambles among large trees on the hilltop and then down to the creek bed and up the far slope. It passes a pre-civil war church, its tidy fenced graveyard, various subdivisions and even gated neighborhoods of grand houses. Powerlines run through the valley on huge gray pylons. The row of shiny corporate buildings to the south must have made elderly landowners a tidy sum a few decades back. In one curve of Conway Road a small sign flags a little scrap of woods holding the Conway family cemetery. A while back, I slowed the car and turned in.
It’s a striking little place. To one side, among the trees and brambles, I see a rectangle of low squared-off stones, the foundation of a house or small barn long ago. In the clearing, there’s room for several cars and then a few dozen gravestones. In the front row, the newest graves are whimsical. Harold Conway, born in the 1930s, has the mysterious slogan “It’s Fictitious” chiseled on his stone, while younger brother Will’s stone advises us to “Stay Loose” . . .
Behind the brothers, three or four short rows of older, more reserved stones reach back into family history as far as the early 1800s. Then an empty space before the grass ends. I didn’t notice at first, tucked into the encroaching bushes, in the shade of overhanging trees, a large formal stone standing off by itself. A bit of fabric is carved over the top, as if a veil is descending that will hide something forever. The stone has only a few carved words: Here lies the Conway slaves known only to God. The marker implies a number of unmarked graves.
True, the power to enslave others was taken for granted for generations by some people there and in other parts of the Midwest. And some fought it for generations too. Still, I was surprised to see the evidence so nearby.
What does the stone tell me? For one thing, at points in our shared history, it was not important to honor black people with a proper burial. It was not important to know and remember them by name, and not important to know the history we share with fellow Americans. But some might say, that’s in the past? Well, yes and no. Email has arrived from Iowa letting me know that the state has shut down my alma mater’s African American studies program. News comes from Philadelphia that the federal government wants to take down historic signs about George Washington’s slaves. In Europe, our government has removed plaques at one of the great military cemeteries highlighting the role played by black troops in defeating Nazi Germany. We should all make it a point to ask teachers we know in Michiana about pressure they might be feeling to teach only what won’t anger the right wing. Don’t forget about the Indiana government website where people can report a teacher for overstepping, even if they don’t attend the school and didn’t take the class, even if they themselves witnessed nothing.
We find new ways to keep alive the facts. We ask to hear stories, we buy books that preserve them, we visit historical sites, and we tell others what we know. One thing I have witnessed is a family graveyard along Conway Road where some names were worth remembering and some were not, where some people were buried as individuals, with dignity, and some were not.
Music: "Wrong Foot Forward" by Flook
