What are we left with when we let go of our history? Nothing, but dust. Burr Oak Cemetery was much more than a resting ground for Blacks in Chicago.
What are we left with when we let go of our history? Nothing but dust. Burr Oak Cemetery was much more than a resting ground for Blacks in Chicago. Sure, it is the place where civil rights icon Emmitt Till, members of the legendary Negro League Baseball teams, and music sensations like Dinah Washington and Willie Dixon are buried. But that cemetery also holds generations of Black families who buried their dead there when no other cemetery would allow Blacks. Their gravestones tell our story. In fact, if you have roots in Chicago, you likely know someone buried there. Burr Oak, we believed, was hallowed ground that honored our progress, from the fields of the rural South through the trials of Jim Crow.
Instead, to our horror and disappointment, Burr Oak has been turned into a field of the unthinkable. Sheriff’s police estimate that some 300 bodies have been exhumed and discarded — mothers, fathers, children, grandparents and great-grandparents. There are reports of bodies being smashed down in graves so others could be buried on top.
Bone fragments discovered in weeds and underbrush and along the roadside. The remains of loved ones treated not like honored ancestors but more like cordwood. We may never know the motive behind these despicable acts. But if we cannot honor our dead, not even in repose, then who are we? Haven’t we learned that the loss of trust is the end of everything we hold dear?
Look at what the loss of integrity and human decency has done to our economy and our individual finances. We trusted our bankers and lenders. Now we find out that we cannot necessarily trust the people who care for the final resting places of our deceased loved ones.
This act is so incredulous that it makes you wonder how hearts could be so callous to one of human kind’s most sacred laws: Don’t disturb the dead. We may never know the answer. One thing is for sure. Sadly, it’s becoming increasingly clear the need to regulate human decency, whether it’s protecting innocent people from predatory lending or cemetery caretakers who desecrate hallowed ground and deceive our trust.
We have to wrap our minds around the possibility that Burr Oak might not be an isolated incident.
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