My ancestors are buried at Oak Hill Plantation in Pittsylvania County, Virginia—sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and formerly enslaved people whose labor built wealth they never inherited. When they died, they were granted only conditional respect. In life and in death, they were treated as less than fully human.

That logic is as old as the nation itself. In 1787, at the Constitutional Convention, lawmakers seeking to preserve Southern political power adopted the Three-Fifths Compromise, allowing enslavers to count three-fifths of their enslaved population for purposes of taxation and representation. The clause acknowledged a measure of humanity while denying its fullness, codifying inequity into the nation’s founding document.

More than a century later, even after emancipation, that idea still shaped how my ancestors were laid to rest.  

When I began researching my oldest known ancestor Flem Adams, Sr.—who was born enslaved around 1830—I discovered his death certificate listed Oak Hill as his burial site, but the property was so vast I had no idea where to begin searching. After talking with family members, they mentioned that we had other relatives buried there as well, but they also didn’t know exactly where to look to find our relatives.

Two Black cemeteries on the Oak Hill property, both containing members of my family, were recently slated for relocation to make way for economic development. At first, I tried to believe something good might come of it. Perhaps, through this process and the DNA testing of the remains, we could finally bring our ancestors’ stories to light. Maybe we could even trace where they came from in West Africa.

The two graveyards rest on land that was once part of one of over 50 plantations owned by the white Hairston family across several states. The cemeteries held the remains of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and formerly enslaved people, those who built the wealth that still shapes the region.

The graveyard on Dec. 10, 2024, prior to grave relocation process. All of the orange and pink flags signify a found grave. Jeffrey Bennett

I was unsettled when I first learned of the relocation: confused, angry, and wary of promises I had heard before. When development plans were drafted in 2009, officials had promised the cemeteries would be preserved in place. What changed between 2009 and 2024? The message we received from county officials recently was that moving the remains would better preserve them, placing them in a safer, more accessible area protected from future construction.

When my family asked me to join the planning committee for the reinterments, I was deeply honored. I felt an ancestral duty to safeguard their legacy. Like the guardians in The Da Vinci Code sworn to protect the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene, I felt charged by my ancestors to protect their resting places and document their stories for all descendants.

Though I never met any of the more than 200 souls buried there, I knew who they were. I attended church with their descendents at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, just six miles north of the Oak Hill property. In our small community, we looked out for one another, and although most of us were genetically family, we still considered people that didn’t share genetics as family as well.  

We wanted to ensure that every individual received dignity in reburial. There was early discussion of reburying the remains collectively in four vaults, which would have been cheaper, but we agreed instead on individual graves. Even if all that remained was a single tooth or a pinky finger, that person deserved a marker and a name. While walking the old gravesites in March 2025 with family members and county officials before the interment process started, descendant Cedric Hairston said, “These people lived and were buried as three-fifths of a human. We want to ensure that when they are reburied, they are regarded as five-fifths, as full humans.”

What struck me most was how the story of these cemeteries mirrors the story of America itself. When these people were first buried in the 1800s, their community still had access to the land. Over time, through Jim Crow, segregation, and disinheritance, Black families were not allowed to access the property anymore. Eventually, generations passed, and although some descendents may have known they had ancestors buried at Oak Hill, they did not know the exact locations because they were prohibited to visit. 

Now, we know. And with that knowledge comes responsibility to protect what was forgotten once before.

Through DNA testing, we hope to connect the remains with living descendants and trace our lineage to both African homelands and Indigenous tribes. Flem’s story reminds me that the violence of slavery was not only physical but reproductive. Because of his height and strength, he was forced to breed with multiple women, treated as a “stud” to produce laborers of good stock. Yet after emancipation, Flem lived as a humble farmhand, listed on the 1910 census as doing “odd jobs.” He raised and rescued children who were not his by blood, but by love and circumstance. In doing so, he reclaimed something slavery had tried to strip away: the right to love without permission.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, bringing these stories to light in a place steeped in Confederate memory carries profound weight. I will always have mixed feelings about this process—grief, gratitude, anger, and pride—but I am thankful that our ancestors’ stories, like their remains, are being unearthed.

As descendant Annie Wilson Mosby told me, “If we want our history to be documented, we must be the ones to document it.” Her words inspired me to write the book, The Black Belt of Virginia: Untold Stories of African American History. This work matters, especially at a time when Black history is being erased from classrooms and public discourse.

What does it mean to bury my ancestors twice? It means respect born from pain. It means the story is no longer about enslavers, plantations, or generals. It is about the enslaved women who rose before dawn to cook, who had to whistle while stirring pots to prove they were not spitting in the master’s food. It is about the sharecroppers and tenant farmers who endured, the descendants who persisted, and the resilience that still lives in us.

The center of the new graveyard on Dec. 17, 2025. The sticks designate where markers will be placed at each grave. Carrie Bennett

On a cold December afternoon, county officials and family members gathered to pay our respects. We stood in a circle at the center of the new cemetery, a symbol of community and continuity, closing a loop that had been broken generations ago. As red clay covered their remains once more, I knew those 200 souls had long since found peace. 

But for us, the living, this burial meant something else. It meant ensuring that those once counted as fractions were finally laid to rest as whole people. Burying my ancestors twice means refusing erasure. It means insisting on dignity. It means acknowledging, at last, that they were always fully human: five-fifths at last.