Lay Down Body: Living History in African American Cemeteries. This item is unavailable.Lay Down Body: Living History in African American Cemeteries

Explores African American heritage as preserved by burial customs

Since burial practices are among the least changed factors of a group's culture, the oldest and most fundamental values are sometimes preserved only in cemeteries. Providing a glimpse into African-American culture, this text recounts the struggles of its people to maintain some vestige of their African heritage through funeral rites and ownership of their burial grounds. These stories provide background information on representative cemeteries throughout the United States and Canada - how and when they were founded, who is buried there and the ongoing struggle to keep possession. It also gives amateur genealogists a head start in learning where many black cemeteries are, in locating lesser-known plots and in knowing what to search for in the cemeteries.