Who Gets Buried in America’s Story?
- Tour de Force Foundation
- Jul 18
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 19
The Spark July 2026
As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, a group of Washington students offers a powerful reminder: history survives because people choose to uncover it, care for it and insist that it belongs.
On May 23, 2025, during a McKinley Technology High School visit to the Mount Zion and Female Union Band Society Cemeteries, eleventh-grade students wrote letters of gratitude to people buried at the site—many of whom had been born enslaved but were free at the time of their deaths.
The letters formed part of an interdisciplinary day of learning and service. Students tested soil, studied invasive plants, cleared rubbish and vegetation, used mathematics to consider the relocation of damaged headstones, created art and researched the people interred there.
The adjoining cemeteries are among Washington’s oldest historically Black burial grounds. Established in 1808 and 1842, they hold the remains of thousands of African Americans, many of whom were born enslaved and later lived as free people, and remain the focus of descendant-led preservation, education and restoration work.
For the students, history was not confined to a textbook or displayed behind glass. It was present in damaged stones, incomplete records and the physical work required to care for a place long denied equal attention.
Their school’s relationship with the cemeteries had developed over several years, beginning with smaller clean-up visits and expanding into research, cataloguing, beautification, art, and oral and written histories. A Tour de Force Foundation grant awarded in July 2025 helped bring the full eleventh-grade cohort to the site and cover transportation and project supplies.
Memory Requires Maintenance
For more than six decades, descendants and supporters have worked to preserve these burial grounds. Current efforts include erosion control, educational tours, community clean-ups and a growing Cemetery Information System recording the lives of people buried there.
The McKinley students entered that longer chain of responsibility. They learned that history survives because someone chooses to research it, tend it, teach it and return.
Who Gets Buried in America’s Story? America at 250
That lesson carries particular force in 2026. As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, museums and communities are debating which histories belong in the national story—and who gets to tell them. The McKinley project offers a local answer. National history is not preserved only in major institutions. It also survives through schools, descendants, neighbourhood organisations and young people willing to encounter the past where it remains. Who is remembered depends, in part, on who is prepared to look.
One Thing Worth Reading
The Mount Zion and Female Union Band Society Cemeteries
The National Park Service traces the history of these two adjoining Black burial grounds, from their nineteenth-century origins to the long community effort that protected them from development and returned them to public memory.
The McKinley students’ visit was one day within a preservation effort that has lasted generations. This reporting shows why the work continues.
In Focus
The History Hiding in Plain Sight
Some histories disappear beneath the ground. Others remain visible on walls, street corners, Metro stations and public buildings—but are still overlooked.
Re-envisioning Blackness: Race and Public Art in the District of Columbia, developed by Mark Auslander and Partners for Historical Justice, with major photographic and documentation contributions by Russell Smith, records Black-themed murals, memorials and sculptures across Washington. Each entry combines visual description, historical context and questions that invite students and readers to look more closely.
A later phase moved east of the Anacostia River, where public artworks carry neighborhood histories often absent from conventional cultural maps. One documented mural brings together Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Marion Barry above an automotive business in Southeast Washington, connecting national civil-rights memory to the lived geography of the neighbourhood.
In a 2026 letter supporting TDF, Auslander described the guide as valuable to artists, university students and school learners who might otherwise have limited access to this body of Black public art. He also noted TDF’s involvement in its digital presentation, interpretation and teaching.
One project asks how we care for histories beneath the city. The other asks whether we notice the histories already standing in front of us.
Across Washington, current exhibitions are examining community memory, Black institutional archives and artists historically excluded from the dominant record.
Together, they suggest that national history is not a single inherited story. It is built from what communities save, interpret and insist belongs.
What’s On
Finding the Great America, 250 Years On. The Real One
The New York Times, July 16, 2026
In a wide-ranging look at Smithsonian exhibitions responding to America’s 250th anniversary, critic Holland Cotter includes Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art among the shows offering a more culturally representative account of the country.
Cotter singles out TDF past grantee Paul Emmanuel’s Untethered/Retethered, describing the parachute-based installation as “ethereal.” The veteran interviews that contributed to the work’s development were supported by a Tour de Force Foundation grant awarded in December 2022.
What’s On
We Make History
Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum
Through January 2028
Diaries, photographs, family archives and neighbourhood stories show how local lives become part of the national record.
We Make History asks visitors to recognise community experience as a building block of American history.
What’s On
At the Vanguard: Making and Saving History at HBCUs
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Through July 19, 2026
More than 100 objects from five historically Black colleges and universities illuminate the role HBCUs have played in Black art, education, activism and cultural preservation.
The exhibition’s title captures the challenge at the centre of this issue: history must be made, but it must also be saved.
For Makers And Educators
The Grant Portal Returns August 15
The Tour de Force Foundation grant portal is currently closed for its annual summer pause.
Applications reopen August 15, 2026.
Until then, explore previous TDF-supported projects.
Give
A donation to Tour de Force Foundation helps support the practical work behind community-based cultural projects: materials, artist and educator fees, documentation, promotion, accessibility, and public programming.
Small grants can help make public participation possible.
Join the conversation
Who gets buried in America’s story—and where have you seen people working to preserve what might otherwise be forgotten?
We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Comment in the comments section at the bottom of this post.
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