Over the course of my career as a journalist, I have covered stories that have elevated the voices of those impacted by racism and shed light on oppressive systems that continue to fuel its spread.
This has included the dismantling of those systems and their physical manifestations, such as tearing down Confederate monuments and hateful symbols.
I’ve previously written about the personal impact such stone relics of hate, as well as the Confederate flag, had on me growing up in northwest Alabama as the descendant of enslaved Black ancestors.
I witnessed Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s monument removal in Richmond, Va., five years ago.
So what might to others feel like a routine assignment felt like a deeper calling as I returned again to the former capital of the Confederacy. One that my mind had not yet processed, but my spirit ancestrally already knew.
In order to fully show how the Confederate legacy still overshadows the city, I had to do “shoe-leather” journalism. This meant going directly to the Confederate sites.
It meant going to the grave of the Confederacy’s soldiers and their leader: Jefferson Davis.
My 78-year-old mother and I got to the cemetery around 4:55 p.m. that day. I took her with me because I don’t like cemeteries and needed her prayers as I walked among the dead.
I had researched what I thought Davis’ grave would look like, so I knew what to look for and wouldn’t be walking around a 135-acre cemetery all day in blistering 99-degree summer heat.
Thankfully, the cemetery was driveable, and I followed a path, first coming to the Confederate officers section. As I stared at the grey tombstones, I felt a chill go over my body and continued to drive. I scanned those stone phantoms, looking for Davis’ grave. We went up winding roads and a hill overlooking the mud-colored James River to the left. Nearby and just below on a slight rise, hikers innocuously wend through a deceptively pastoral setting. It was a beautiful view yet eerie, as tombstones continued to line the hill on the right.
At the top of the hill, we saw more tombs and mausoleums scattered like skeletal sentries guarding a circular gravesite.
I had found what I was looking for.
Looking at the cemetery map, I told my mother, “He should be around this area. Stay in the car.” When I got out of the car, I felt disoriented. The air felt hot, thick and suffocatingly heavy as I walked.
I first came across the grave of Davis’ daughter, Margaret Davis Hayes. Her grave was memorialized with an angel standing between pages of the Bible. Nearby, a second stone angel watched over the grave of Varina Anne “Winnie” Davis, another child dubbed the “Daughter of the Confederacy.”
Then I saw it: Davis and his wife, Varina Davis, graves nestled side-by-side. A bronze monument of the Confederate leader stood guard over their graves. I began to feel ill and as if a malicious energy was trying to envelop me. Like the energy of a dog snarling at an unknown and unwanted person on its property.
Davis was unapologetic in his White supremacist views about Black people. After the final Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, Davis wrote that he believed “the proper condition of the negro is slavery, or a complete subjection to the white man.” He also said slavery was “the form of civil government instituted for a class of people not fit to govern themselves.”
Here I was, a free Black woman from the Deep South with degrees and a national voice, standing before the grave of a man who led a bloody campaign to preserve the dehumanization and enslavement of my ancestors. A war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. A racist campaign that for generations has influenced bigoted, hateful, and oppressive actions against people of color, including me and my parents.
I thought about my father, 69 years old, who grew up poor on Florence, Alabama’s west side, and courageously broke through racist roadblocks to become the city’s first Black fireman in 1981. He would continue to endure racism to become the city’s first Black lieutenant fire inspector.
And my mother, Lauderdale County Emergency Management Agency’s first Black deputy director, won a discrimination lawsuit after a racism-motivated termination of her job. She fought and was ultimately reinstated.
Their struggle and the struggle of my ancestors, who survived the perilous journey across the ocean in the cargo hold of a ship from their African homeland to the riverside human trade hub, Richmond, one of the places where they were bought, sold and bound for more than 400 years, was a full-circle moment.
This was not just a journalism assignment, but a spiritual one.
One in which, as a survivor of the racial trauma and oppression my ancestors were forced to face and carried across generations, I now had the power to confront an oppressor and symbolically break free.
Etched on Davis’ monument are the words, “Faithful to all trusts. A martyr to principle. He lived and died most consistent of American soldiers and statesmen.”
Underneath is the Bible scripture Matthew 5:10, which is written on his monument as “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Around the gravesite were benches where people could sit and, supposedly, reflect.
“Who would want to sit here?” I thought to myself. Then I knew: His grave was elevated on a high point like the throne of an idol for those who worship his racist cause. A principality of racism. His monument was angled slightly askew from the James River and Richmond.
Standing before his monument, I was not angry. Nor was I sad. I did not curse his grave nor wish any ill-will on his followers.
Because to do so would feed the racist ideology that permeates the country today and I refuse to allow that to penetrate my spirit.
I was neutral and did what I was assigned to do: witness the dying vestiges of White supremacy reaching out with bony fingers to desperately hold power over a view of our nation that is damned and confined to the graveyard of our past.
