BLACK BY GOD: A small WV town discovered an unmarked slave cemetery. They spent Juneteenth honoring the dead.

By Skylar Cale | Black By God, Folk Reporters, Donate here.

Over 100 people came to the dedication ceremony for the Fairfax Slave Ceremony in Preston County.

Watt, Ellen, Bazil, Rachel, Charlotte, Argoth, Loretta, Virginia, Lorenzo, William Henry and Juretta. Of the 15 to 20 enslaved people buried in the Fairfax Slave Cemetery, these are the only names we know. 

Arthurdale Heritage hosted a dedication ceremony for the Fairfax Slave Cemetery last week on Juneteenth. Over 100 people came, and only standing room remained in the Arthurdale Heritage hall. 

The Preston County nonprofit started restoring the site within the past few years after discovering unmarked graves for enslaved people in Col. James Fairfax’s family cemetery. An overseer for George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, Fairfax was the largest enslaver in Preston County, imprisoning more than 40 people. 

The ceremony to honor some of them began with a drum salute by Laurie Goux and her son, Khalil Woodward. As they played the drums, the room lit up, and some folks were moving in their seats to the beat. Goux also taught people a song to sing along with them as they drummed. Drumming was likely significant to the people Fairfax enslaved.

“When people are enslaved,  they are taken away from their families and put in a strange atmosphere where they don’t know their food, their spiritual systems, their family, their style of dress, their language, their music, their dance,” Goux said. 

Goux was previously a dance instructor at Davis & Elkins College. In 2023, she started working full-time at West Virginia Wesleyan College. So, her son always grew up around music. 

Woodward discovered he could play the drums while practicing for his mother’s dance classes. He said the music he performs helps him be comfortable with himself and open up more. He enjoys sharing his culture with folks around him, especially younger Black people who may have a disconnect from their culture. He said he gets a lot of attention from younger kids because of his dreads and African-style clothing. 

“One of the things I look forward to when doing events like this is seeing young people. Young people that look like me, too, because it’s like a cultural disconnect,” Woodward said. “Playing African instruments is not always seen as the coolest thing you can do.” 

After the drum salute, multiple people spoke:

 Kenneth Kidd, the executive director of Arthurdale Heritage; Ron Allen from Mountaineers Indivisible Citizen Action; Chris Haddox, a local musician who played the banjo; Mark King from the Morgantown-Kingwood NAACP; Dr. Tamara Bailey, a professor at WV Wesleyan, and Torli Bush, a local poet. 

Bailey gave an address titled, “Slavery and Freedom in Virginia and West Virginia: Honoring the Enslaved Peoples of Preston County.”

For the first half of the 19th century, more than 40 enslaved people worked for Fairfax. Some worked in crop fields, including tobacco fields. Others worked in skilled trades, the house or were hired out to people. They found ways to resist their oppressors, build families and create a community within the county. They were not given their freedom, but they still found ways to create some normalcy in the face of their oppression.

Bailey also spoke about her ancestry and her own connections to the people enslaved by Fairfax.  Her great-great-grandmother was enslaved in Arthurdale and later worked as a midwife who brought a lot of children into the world.

“I thought the most important part was not necessarily the cemetery itself – it’s self-explanatory – but to talk about the people’s lives before they passed away and their descendants who didn’t pass away and what freedom meant,” Bailey said. 

In her presentation, Bailey also gave a look into what the census looked like during the 1800s. The census originally accounted for white people and enslaved people. As the years went on, the government added another category called “mulatto,” for those who were mixed race. She also talked about how nearby Virginia wanted to limit the freedoms of enslaved people — and eventually banned free enslaved people from living in the state itself. 

After Bailey’s address and the poetry reading, the community slowly made its way to the Fairfax Cemetery. Many people joined in the procession, and the Buckwheat Express, Preston County’s busline, donated a bus to help people who couldn’t walk there easily. 

Once everyone reached the cemetery, they began the dedication with “a liberation for the ancestors,” a musical tribute by Goux. That was followed by a poetry reading from Dr. Rayna Momen and a reading of the names given by famous West Virginia writer Ann Pancake. Then came a wreath and flower laying, where people of the congregation could place carnations on the graves. Every grave had at least one flower.

Afterwards, there was a moment of silence. Music was sung by local R&B legend Al Anderson. The benediction, a short prayer and invocation of divine blessing that closes religious services, was given by the Rev. Dr. Lisa Fox and Elizabeth Satterfield, Curator and Director of Education at Arthurdale Heritage. 

She said the nonprofit was originally going to just put up signage to mark graves, but ultimately wanted to do something more to honor the enslaved people who were buried there. They decided to host the dedication ceremony on Juneteenth, feeling it was a poignant time to honor those who passed before they were ever granted their freedom. 

Satterfield started working at the Heritage in 2022 after graduating with a dual master’s in public history and public administration from West Virginia University. She has worked there for four years and has rarely seen this much turnout for one of their events. 

“It’s not unusual to have 50 or 60 people here for a program,” Satterfield said. “To have 100 people and standing room only–I was surprised by this in a really good way.”

The community of Arthurdale is fairly small, with fewer than 1,200 residents. So, to have so many people show up from different parts of the state was amazing. Although the weather was rocky in the area at the beginning of the week,  it led to a beautiful sunny day to honor those who were buried.