NEWS

Zoo cemetery honors slaves 'no longer on the margins'

Stacey Barchenger
sbarchenger@tennessean.com
Nate Pulido, 6, looks over the Grassmere cemetery site at the Nashville Zoo during a dedication ceremony Saturday.

"That's a lot of slaves."

Those words slipped out of 6-year-old Nate Pulido's mouth Saturday as he stood at the edge of a cemetery tucked away at the Nashville Zoo. Twenty people are buried there. Their resting places are marked only by jagged rocks and, on Saturday, yellow roses entwined with a carpet of fallen leaves.

The cemetery plot was dedicated Saturday and entombs the remains of people believed to be slaves on the old Grassmere farm, a large tract of land that is now home to the zoo.

A plaque near the burial site reads: "Here lie 20 unknown individuals who lived and worked on this property. Reinterred with reverence at this site on the 12th day of June, 2014."

The cemetery serves as a reminder of the contributions of slaves to Middle Tennessee, officials said. Signs soon will be installed explaining the history of the site.

"This is a way to document past communities and people that were sort of left out of the history," said Tiffiny Tung, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University who has studied the remains.

Stones mark the graves of 20 people, believed to be slaves, at the Grassmere cemetery site at the Nashville Zoo. The cemetery was dedicated Saturday.

The skeletons were found in 1989 and were left alone until earlier this year when the zoo sought to expand. Archaeologists exhumed the bodies from near the entrance, took samples to study and reburied the skeletons in June. Scientists determined the remains are likely those of slaves working at Grassmere who died between 1830 and 1860.

The location of the new slave cemetery, near the Grassmere farm home and the family cemetery, is something special, Tennessee State Historian Dr. Carroll Van West said.

He said it was important to honor the slaves who lived in this area as citizens and important members of our history, even though they might not have been considered that at one time.

"These 20 people, these 20 citizens are no longer on the margins," he said. "They are central to who we are and the nation we live in today."

Among those who attended the ceremony were Middle Tennessee State University students who have been helping study the skeletal remains. Angela Pulido is one of the students, and she brought along her children, Nate, and 8-year-old Hannah.

"We need to know who built this land," Pulido said. "We should honor the people that did the hard work. We're doing that today."

It appears the mission scientists and historians hope the cemetery bears — as an educational tool — is already working. Pulido asked Hannah what she learned at the ceremony.

"That they were still citizens, even though they were slaves," the third-grader replied.

Reach Stacey Barchenger at 615-726-8968 and on Twitter @sbarchenger.