burial

On Sunday, February 25, 2024, in the middle of the night, I finally found the North Carolina plantation that my ancestors were enslaved on: Midway Plantation. I stared at my laptop, completely in awe of the fact that all the puzzle pieces were starting to fit together after I had spent years tracing my roots.

I had read that the North Carolina State Capitol officially launched an ongoing digital humanities project that names more than 130 enslaved Black men who built and maintained the State Capitol between 1833 and 1865. In hopes of finding information that could be helpful for my genealogy research, I checked to see if my great-great grandfather Milton’s surname, “Hinton,” appeared on that list. When I saw that there were three enslaved Black men with the surname “Hinton,” I realized that this last name was more common than I had thought and I should research which plantations in North Carolina were owned by enslavers with the last name “Hinton.”

In order to trace my lineage back to any plantation, I first needed to know the names of Milton’s parents. I spent hours digging until I found Milton’s marriage certificate on an online genealogical database. The marriage certificate stated that Milton was the son of Ruffin Hinton, a resident of Wake County.

What I discovered next left me speechless.

I learned that my great-great-great grandfather Ruffin Hinton was born on Midway Plantation in Wake County, N.C. He was the son of Selanie Toby, an African woman who was an enslaved cook on the plantation, and Charles Lewis Hinton, the white plantation owner who raped Selanie. (It is crucial to explicitly call it rape because there was no such thing as consent under enslavement.) Ruffin later had many children, one of whom was my great-great grandfather Milton Hinton. Milton then had a daughter named Mabel Hinton. My great grandmother Mabel gave birth to my grandmother Patricia, who gave birth to my mother Pamela, who gave birth to me.

Once I discovered this information about Ruffin and Selanie, it was like something in the universe shifted. I could feel it deep down in my bones that part of my life’s purpose was to keep my Black ancestors’ names and stories alive. I was determined to pick up the pen and write my ancestors into a world that was repeatedly trying to erase their existence.

It just so happened that a fellow Black descendant of Midway Plantation, Jill Jackson, had the same goal. Jackson was raising funds to purchase a historical marker for a long-neglected, unmarked cemetery where our enslaved African ancestors had been buried. And when I connected with Jackson, she told me that the historical marker would be unveiled at a ribbon-cutting ceremony this year, just a few days after Juneteenth.

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Immediately upon hearing the news, I blocked out time in my calendar to fly down South for the ceremony. I wanted to attend the ceremony so that I could bear witness. The late writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin once said, “I’m a witness. That is my responsibility. I write it all down.” I was intent on being a witness—not an observer—and there was, in fact, a difference. An observer merely watches something unfold. A witness takes what they’ve seen and builds a monument out of it.

To bear witness is to carve out an undeniably vast space for the truth, so that people have no choice but to see what you’ve seen and know what you know.

The preservation of the burial ground began in 2023 when Jackson was appointed to the Widewaters Homeowners Association Board, an organization that makes and enforces rules and guidelines for Widewaters Village (which is located in Knightdale, Wake County). Jackson was tasked with the job of finding grant funding for the cemetery. Her reply was, “What cemetery?” Jackson, and so many others in the Knightdale community, had no idea that the wooded land behind the community clubhouse pool was a burial ground for enslaved Black people.

However, in 1995, the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology had identified the site as a burial ground for Black people who had been enslaved by the Hintons. The North Carolina Office of State Archaeology also noted that there are 131 graves that may be associated with the early 19th century residents of eastern Wake County. In fact, a document from the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office mentions census records that indicate that Charles Lewis Hinton enslaved 126 Africans on Midway Plantation in 1860.

Since there wasn’t any grant funding available to preserve the burial ground, Jackson reached out to members of the community for help. Together, the Knightdale community cleaned up the burial ground and raised funds to purchase a historical marker—an act of bearing witness.

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On Saturday, June 22, 2024, I stood outside of the cemetery gates with Knightdale community members and fellow Black descendants of Midway Plantation for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The North Carolina sun was shining down on us from the bright blue sky, and it felt like that was my ancestors’ way of saying, Thank you for remembering us. I became very emotional when Councilor Steve Evans, a Knightdale elected official, spoke about how my ancestors were finally experiencing the peace that they never experienced in their time living on this earth. I thought about the horrors that the Hinton enslavers subjected my ancestors to and how my ancestors were resting now, forever free, in a cemetery that will never be destroyed.

After the ribbon-cutting ceremony was over, I entered the burial ground. It was one thing to hear about what the burial ground looked like, but it was another thing to actually be there, to see it with my own eyes, to walk through the resting place of the people whose resilience brought me into this world. At first, the ground beneath my feet was flat. But as I continued walking, there were visible depressions in the ground, deep pockets in the earth that looked like mini valleys. Each of those depressions was a grave. Many of the graves were the size of an adult’s body. The smaller ones, I realized, were the graves of children. None of the graves had a tombstone indicating the name of the person that was buried there, the year they were born, or the year they died.

Both in life and in death, my ancestors were treated with zero dignity and respect by the Hintons. As if my ancestors’ lives didn’t matter. As if my ancestors weren’t people who each had their own names and dreams and hopes and relatives who loved them.

And yet, my ancestors understood their worth and were fiercely determined to not be erased. While walking through the burial ground, I noticed that some of the graves were marked with fieldstones. I learned from a fellow Black descendant of Midway Plantation that our enslaved ancestors placed fieldstones near the graves of their loved ones in order to honor them. It was their way of saying, We were here.

In the same spirit, Jackson and volunteers from the community marked each grave with a bright lime green pin flag. It was their way of saying, They were here, and you can never erase them. My ancestors will not be forgotten under dirt and branches and rubble. These markers force people to remember that my ancestors existed. They force everyone to bear witness to the genocide that was committed against my people here, on this land.

Seeing the unmarked graves reminded me of a heart-wrenching truth: I’ll never know the names and stories of most of my ancestors who were buried there. I’ll never know their birthdays, their dreams and aspirations, the people they fell in love with, their favorite pastimes, or the specific places where they each found refuge. But that just made the fire inside me burn brighter. I’m determined, now more than ever, to find out everything that I can about Selanie, Ruffin, Milton, Mabel, and so many of my other ancestors.

And I won’t stop there. I’m going to learn more about the elders in my family who are still living because the time to remember and commemorate is now. I’ll find out more about their childhoods in the South, the meals they cooked, the songs they sang, the prayers they prayed, the dreams they dreamt, the mistakes they navigated through, the adventures they courageously went on. I will be a witness to their lives, and I will share their stories with the world. This is legacy. This is how current and future generations will know that we were here.

My great-great-great-great grandmother Selanie survived unimaginable horrors on Midway Plantation. And because she survived, Ruffin existed. And Milton existed. And Mabel existed. And my grandmother, my mother, and I exist today. I am alive because of Black people who stood firm on shaky ground and decided that—despite the oppressors’ greatest efforts to wipe them out—their bloodline would not end with them. My ancestors transformed scraps into soul food, turned the lowest of lands into the highest of mountains, turned raging seas into calm waters and refused to drown. I will spend the rest of my life building upon their legacy and making sure it isn’t buried.

Because you can never bury us. We are here to stay, until the end of time.