Southern Spaces (Jul 2023)
Nannie's Stone: Commemoration and Resistance
Abstract
Mount Zion and Female Union Band Society cemeteries, which together constitute the oldest African American burial ground in the Washington, DC area, is a long-contested space with powerful emotional holds on local communities of color. Among the cemetery’s most charged and beloved sites, the locus of frequent material gifts by visitors, and of a recent act of desecration, is the enigmatic headstone of a seven year old girl, \"Nannie,\" who died in 1856. This essay points to historical antecedents of the gift-giving practice, considers the identity of a child long subject to speculation, and insists on the importance of such sites for movements of social justice.
