Alexandria's Freedmen's Cemetery: A Legacy of Freedom - Paperback

by Char McCargo Bah (Author)

Author and researcher Char McCargo Bah recounts the stories of the men and women buried in Alexandria's freedman's cemetery and the search for their descendants.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Federal troops secured Alexandria as Union territory. Former slaves, called contrabands, poured in to obtain protection from their former masters. Due to overcrowding, mortality rates were high. Authorities seized an undeveloped parcel of land on South Washington Street, and by March 1864, it had been opened as a cemetery for African Americans. Between 1864 and 1868, more than 1,700 contrabands and freedmen were buried there. For nearly eighty years, the cemetery lay undisturbed and was eventually forgotten. Rediscovered in 1996, it has now been preserved as a monument to the courage and sacrifice of those buried within.

Author Biography

Char McCargo Bah is the CEO/owner of FindingThingsforU, LLC. She is a freelance writer for the Alexandria Gazette, an independent historian, a professional genealogist, a lecturer and a 2014 Living Legend of Alexandria, Virginia. Char has appeared on numerous television interviews with CBS, FOX-5, Comcast and Public Broadcasting Services. She is co-author of African Americans of Alexandria, Virginia: Beacons of Light in the Twentieth Century. Mumini M. Bah is editor for FindingThingsforU, LLC.