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The Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery Memorial, a burial ground for more than 1,700 escaped slaves, stands alone on a plot of land at the corner of North Washington and Church streets on the outskirts of historic Old Town Alexandria.
The escaped slaves were known at the time as “contrabands,” and risked everything for a chance at freedom — and a better life — during the 1860s.
“We say that these are enslaved men, women and children who came from other areas seeking freedom behind Union lines here in Alexandria,” said Audrey P. Davis, the City of Alexandria’s African American history division director.
City historian Dan Lee says up until 2007, the plot of land had an office building and a gas station on top of it; but a historic archaeological excavation changed all that.
“This is kind of a redemption arc for the City of Alexandria,” he told WTOP. “This is a living memorial to the people who took the Declaration of Independence literally, that perhaps it wasn’t written for them, but they said, ‘this applies to me, and I want this too.’”
A sculpture called “the Path of Thorns and Roses” dominates the landscape with figures with outstretched arms reaching to the sky, in a desperate bid for freedom.
“Many, unfortunately, due to the disease and their health situations, did not live long in freedom,” Davis explained.
She said the origin of the term “contrabands” started in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, when three enslaved men who had been forced to work for the Confederacy by their white owners — Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend — escaped, and got into a rowboat bound for the Union outpost of Fort Monroe.
“Arriving there just a day ahead of them was Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler,” Davis said.
Butler, a Union general, was faced with a choice when the three men arrived: adhere to fugitive slave laws of the time and send them back to their owners, or keep them as a “contraband of war.”
“He said: ‘I’m going to keep them as contraband of war, and I’m going use their labor for the Union cause,'” Davis recounted. “And it’s said that word spread so fast when he did this, and when he kept these three men, that within the first week or two, hundreds of contrabands were flocking to Fort Monroe. And I’m actually proud to say my great-great-grandfather was one of them.”
In addition to the sculpture, the memorial has multiple rectangular bronze walls, adorned with bas-reliefs depicting the brave souls who made the journey north from all over — but mainly from parts of Southern Virginia.
You can also see murals of young Black children receiving education in freedmen’s schools. Back then, education was seen as the ultimate symbol of freedom — taking something back that had been denied to African Americans for so long.
On the bronze walls of the memorial are the names of everyone known to have been buried on the plot of land. These records, which were kept by the military, are very rare, considering the lack of documented Black history from this time period.
“It gives you not only the first and last name of a formerly enslaved person, but the age they were when they died, where they died, and what they died of,” Davis said.
Next to some of the names on these bronze walls, you might also see a circle with a triangular arrow, and the words “living descendant” written, signifying that they’ve been able to identify a living relative of someone buried here. So far, Davis said they’ve been able to use genealogy methods track down around 2,000 descendants.
“These were people — men, women and children — who are struggling to survive, who know that if they can get here to Alexandria, that they have a chance to have a life and to be free,” she reflected. “And that’s all anyone ever wants, is to be free, to be able to decide how you can educate your children, how you can live.”
After 2007, amid a groundswell of community support and activism, the Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery Memorial was constructed and dedicated in 2014.
“It shows the importance of African American history to Alexandria’s history,” Lee told WTOP.
Today, it stands for all time, as a proper reminder of how far we’ve come: a solemn, yet hopeful dedication to those who deigned to achieve the dream of liberty through sheer force of will and determination.
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