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Wilkinson
My team had a grueling six-week project in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the summer sun and humidity of Washington, D.C. Our project site was an overrun tract of land that held the distinction of being the first racially integrated cemetery in the city and the resting place of a number of prominent African Americans. Unfortunately, over the past half-century it had grown wild. For more than six months, AmeriCorps*NCCC teams had been clearing out the overgrowth to reveal the tombstones beneath.
It was an emotionally difficult project for a team that was just weeks away from its final days in AmeriCorps*NCCC. Prior to this project, we believed that our environmental goals concerned the preservation of wilderness areas, the propagation of favorable species, and the beautification of urban spaces by adding community gardens and window flower boxes. This time we had been asked to cut down anything green and growing! Armed with chainsaws, machetes, bow saws, massive clippers, and other instruments of destruction, many members of my team found discouragement and ambivalence in the thorny bushes, poison ivy, and creeping vines of Woodlawn Cemetery. One of the mental hurdles our team had to overcome was looking back over the expanses cleared by previous teams to see bushes and small trees sprouting up just as soon as the teams had moved on.
As usual, we drew on each other for support during the more difficult times. My teammate David and I decided to attack a certain stand of briars together. The area was so thick with shrubbery that it looked like primeval growth. As we began our clearing, we found that we were attacking perhaps the biggest, most brambly bush imaginable. It was only through mutual encouragement and commiseration that we finally managed to cut into the center of it.
There, to our astonishment, we found a tombstone measuring about one meter high. It was of relatively large proportions compared to the other grave markers we had seen in the cemetery. The stone hadn't been visible before we started cutting, and it was by far the most monumental discovery revealed by our team's work at the cemetery. We worked and cleared until we could read the name inscribed on the stone: Wilkinson. As we continued to hack, rip, and chop the vines and thorns that were scratching at our arms and faces, we talked about who this Wilkinson person may have been. It was then that we began to realize exactly what this bush was. In the late afternoon it was plain to see that all of the branches grew from a central root, and that root was positioned directly in front of the Wilkinson headstone. It gave us a chilling sense of connection through the years to understand that this huge prickly thing grew out of a simple rose bush that had been planted by someone who cared for him. Or her.
We worked on in relative silence as I marveled at the time and place in which I found myself. Where was the person who had planted this rose bush? Somewhere else in this very cemetery? Suddenly the service element of this project all fell into place for me. Being able to relate to the individuals buried in this cemetery and those who loved them made me understand the importance of the project. We needed to provide a respectful place for those who had gone before us.
Standing at the peak of a hilltop cemetery in southeast Washington, D.C.—surrounded on all sides by urban districts that politicians regularly point to as an example of what should not occur-I found reassurance in knowing that others had lived through times maybe more difficult than ours. And those people had the foresight to develop an integrated cemetery in a century that had also known slavery. It was a moment of lucidity that crept up on me, struck me with its lesson, and left just as stealthily as it came. I remember it vividly as "one of those moments," one of many during my ten months, when I looked around me, wondering in amazement at where I was and how I got there. |
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