By Black Star News
Photos: Facebook
In Virginia, an organization is continuing its fight to protect a local African American and Native American burial ground, Scott Cemetery, with a recent legal appeal.
The Coalition to Save Historic Thoroughfare founder, Frank Washington, said that his organization has “filed an appeal to the recent dismissal of its lawsuit to protect the Scott Cemetery.”
Thoroughfare, which has roots going back hundreds of years, originally was a Native American community. In the 1800’s, African Americans began to live in the area and a strong Native and African American community was forged. Today, Thoroughfare is centered in the area around where the Oakrum Baptist Church is located.
The Coalition maintains that when developers obtained land, which included three Thoroughfare cemeteries, that the developers, in 2021, destroyed Scott Cemetery; while allegedly restricting access to the Potters Field Cemetery; and is threatening the Fields/Allen Cemetery, with their development plans.
“Descendants of freed slaves and Native-Americans still live in Thoroughfare,” says Washington. “Slaves, freed slaves, freedmen/freedwomen, and Native-Americans who worked and lived on the land of Thoroughfare, Va., are under the threat of having their final sacred resting places decimated or completely removed by encroaching developers. Family members are also being denied access to many of these graves as well as having their burial rights in their private cemeteries stripped from them by the County. No longer allowed to rest beside their loved ones as they have for hundreds of years.”
In 2024, Washington launched a lawsuit against The Farm Brewery at Broad Run (International Investments LLC) and Prince William County over the conflict with Scott Cemetery. In November of 2024, The Coalition won a judgement in the matter but the lawsuit was then moved from local to federal court. Last month, a U.S. District Court judge denied a preliminary injunction motion while granting a dismissal motion.
“The road to justice is rarely an easy one”, said Washington, “but when you hear the resting place of your loved ones referred to as a junkyard you realize that the road to justice is also sometimes coupled with a lack of human decency and morality. Our hope is that this Appeal will restore the rules of law that have evaded us for so long.”
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