Buried in Anonymity, and Ignominy, Too

[groovedaddy]

EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. — Wedged between a strawberry patch and an encroaching swath of suburbia, the men and women who lie in the Mormon Island Relocation Cemetery are a long-dead, little-noted lot: a Mr. Outen, for example, who died in December 1862, or Elizabeth, the wife of James, who died in April some two decades later.

But for the better part of five decades, the most notable tombstones at Mormon Island were those without names: 36 anonymous decedents whose grave markers shared a single, shocking label: “Moved from Nigger Hill Cemetery.”

Perhaps more jarring were the words that followed, saying that the headstones were placed “by U.S. Government” in 1954.

“This is something you wouldn’t believe, not in this day and time,” said Ralph L. White, an African-American businessman and former city councilman in Stockton, in nearby San Joaquin County. “When I went up to that gravesite, I feel like I could feel the presence of those people crying to get those things off of them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/us/10headstones.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23