Since the developers had always known that they were building upon a cemetery, the discovery of deceased Black bodies was more of an inevitable nuisance, rather than a deterrent or justification to stop construction. You just had to live through it and pray that you would not lose your life.”ĭuring construction, all of the gravestones were bulldozed, and then as the foundation for the apartment complex was being dug, body parts were discovered. We had no one to turn to for help,” said Matthews to The Daily Beast. “Some of the same Montgomery County police officers, who were supposed to protect you, were the same people you saw when you got a peak at the Klansmen at night. Matthews’ family moved away from River Road in 1959 to escape the KKK. Despite the collapse of the KKK in the 1940s, it was reborn a decade later because its racist philosophy of terror still burned bright within segregationist Americans. Racist white Americans wore KKK hoods and robes, and terrorized Black communities without the need of a centralized organization. In response to the civil rights movement, the 1950s witnessed the third iteration of the KKK, but unlike the previous two iterations, this version of the KKK was decentralized and hyperlocal. Yet by the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Black community’s tranquility had been shattered by the growing presence of the Ku Klux Klan, and in just over a decade almost all traces of the Black community had been erased. But the threat of racial violence and terror was never far away.įor River Road’s Black community, the cemetery had also become its playground because the segregated public parks were off limits. Matthews has fond memories playing hide and seek at Moses Macedonia African Cemetery, which neighbored his childhood home and was not far from Macedonia Baptist Church, where he is still a member.
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