NORTH CAROLINA -- They are a piece of America’s complicated story: burial sites for former slaves and newly freed African Americans. Now, a North Carolina lawmaker wants to make sure they are cataloged and preserved.

• Rep. Alma Adams, D-12th District, introduced legislation creating what she describes as a database of historic African American cemeteries and burial grounds across the country.
• Adams says too often, the burial plots are discovered when it is too late -- only after a construction project or digging has begun.
• The legislation is in its earliest stages on Capitol Hill, and is still awaiting a vote in committee.

Rep. Alma Adams, D-12th District, introduced legislation creating what she describes as a database of historic African American cemeteries and burial grounds across the country. The legislation also provides for grants that can be used for upkeep and research.

“It’s really about respecting people who have made contributions to our families, to our cultures,” Adams said.

The congresswoman’s office says it is difficult to estimate how many of these burial sites may exist across the country, due in part to the fact that many are unmarked.

Adams says too often, the burial plots are discovered when it is too late -- only after a construction project or digging has begun. She instead wants to see those spots preserved.

“All around the country, long-hidden grave sites of African Americans have been uncovered in recent years: in a small park in New York City, on a plantation in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, on a college campus in Georgia, under a playground in Philadelphia,” Adams said during a recent hearing about the bill.

In her district, which includes much of Charlotte, Adams says there are “countless” instances of rediscovered burial sites.

One site that has received attention in recent years is Biddleville Cemetery, located near Five Points Park. Despite estimates that more than 300 free Blacks were buried there, only a handful of tombstones remain, some jutting out of the earth on an angle.

Some of the burials there date back to just after the Reconstruction era.

Another example of such burial site can be found in the nation's capital.

Walter Pierce Park is located in a bustling northwest D.C. neighborhood. It sits on a site of a former African American cemetery, where some researchers and advocates estimate that thousands of African Americans were buried in the late 1800s. A fair number of those buried there were former slaves.

“It’s our goal to make this, instead of a place of forgetting, a place of remembering,” said Mary Belcher, a long-time D.C. resident.

Belcher has worked to protect the plot, intervening to stop community gardening and some landscaping work. She even designed a possible memorial to install in the park, recognizing the men, women, and children buried at the site. 

Belcher said she believes Rep. Adams’s legislation is a good first step. However, she also argues that in order for these plots to truly be preserved and protected, it is also going to take advocacy at the grassroots level and community involvement.

“Information is important then to take to your local city government, your neighborhood groups, so that information can be filled out and descendants can be found,” she said.

The legislation is in its earliest stages on Capitol Hill, and is still awaiting a vote in committee. The legislation has supporters from both parties, including from fellow North Carolinian, Rep. Ted Budd.