By JAMES SATTERFIELD
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ Elizabeth Cross Black expected to be laid to rest beside her husband, Hade, with a place of honor among their white Anderson County owners.
But five years after his death, she wound up in the “Black ward” at a Knoxville hospital, alone and dying, too poor for life-sustaining medical care.
Her body was discarded in a Knox County field-turned-dump-site for the poor _ no headstone, not even a marker on a map.
“There’s no way we’re going to be able to find her body,” Anderson County volunteer historian Leo York says. “There are no records. They just didn’t keep records (for the poor and enslaved). I thought that was extremely sad.”
But, York told Knox News, he is undeterred in his effort to reunite Elizabeth and Hade.
“I found a headstone (in the Knox County Potter’s Field) on one grave from around the time of Elizabeth’s death,” York said. “I’m going to get permission to take dirt from each side of it. That will be sufficient to reunite Elizabeth and Hade.”
York and a volunteer group of citizens and county commissioners are also continuing their effort to turn an overgrown plot of land from a forgotten burial site for American veterans and Anderson County slaves into a protected historical site.
“I think it’s absolutely appalling that people were discarded as they were,” Anderson County Commissioner Catherine Denenberg said at a Monday meeting on the campaign.
A sonnet is engraved on a monument, photographed on Tuesday, March 16, 2021, found in Potter’s Field in East Knoxville. The cemetery can be found on the edge of Dr. Walter Hardy Park near the corner of S. Kyle St. and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in East Knoxville.
Hade Black had indeed been buried in a place of honor in the cemetery on the family farm of his white owners – the Joseph Black family.
“(A descendant of the slave owners) said growing up as a child, her father, Robert, son of Joseph Black, never stopped talking about Hade and what a good man he was,” York said. “Robert wrote a school paper on Hade.”
When TVA began buying up family farms in Claxton to build its Bull Run Fossil Plant, the Black family insisted the utility agree to create a new family cemetery that would remain deeded to the family.
In 1962, TVA ordered workers to dig up the gravesites of more than 100 slaves and American veterans from the Black family cemetery, put the bodies in pine boxes and reinter them in a 1-acre plot hidden in the woods.
York discovered the forgotten cemetery on the edge of property owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority off Blackstock Ferry Lane a few years ago. He took on caretaking duties and eventually identified the gravesite of Hade Black.
The gravestone of Hade Black, a freed slave, buried at Black Cemetery in Clinton, Tenn. on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021. Leo York and a group of commissioners and community members are working to reunite Hade Black, a freed slave, buried in a forgotten cemetery on the edge of TVA property and his wife, buried in a Knoxville potter’s field.
York bought a headstone for Hade’s grave. But, York told Knox News, he won’t be paying for a headstone for Elizabeth’s new gravesite beside her husband.
“The people of Claxton had read (the Knox News) article,” York said. “They were very touched by the story.”
Donations flowed into Summer and Son Monument Company, he said, and the $450 tab for Elizabeth’s headstone has been covered.
“Within an hour and a half of the headstone needing to be paid for, (the firm) said they even had a surplus of money to donate back,” York said. “People just kept calling all day.”
York said he wants to hold a public ceremony when Elizabeth’s headstone is installed. But there’s one big problem.
“There’s this big cable running across (the only entryway),” York said. “That cable just worries me to death.”
TVA installed the cable years ago to keep trespassers away from the utility’s land. York has asked that it be removed, but so far he’s been rebuffed.
“I want a proper gate, not a cable,” York said. “I want to ask TVA about that – would they offer one of those metal gates? They’ve got a bunch of them that aren’t necessary (now that the plant is being shuttered in 2023).”
A TVA spokesman has said the cable was installed to prevent illegal dumping. TVA staffers promised at a recent Anderson County Commission committee meeting to look into what the utility can do to assist in transforming the cemetery into a historical site.
The former “Black ward” in Knoxville where Elizabeth Cross Black died is photographed on Tuesday, March 16, 2021.
TVA will begin shutting down the Bull Run plant in 2023. TVA has not yet announced final plans for the disposal of the millions of tons of radioactive coal ash waste stored there or the hundreds of acres of land the utility owns in Claxton.
Denenberg said she will be talking to TVA leaders soon about helping restore and maintain the cemetery as a historical site.
