{"id":57123,"date":"2024-09-16T23:28:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T21:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=57123"},"modified":"2024-09-18T07:03:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T05:03:07","slug":"a-forgotten-cemetery-in-a-forest-and-a-mans-grave-with-a-strange-epitaph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/09\/16\/a-forgotten-cemetery-in-a-forest-and-a-mans-grave-with-a-strange-epitaph\/","title":{"rendered":"A forgotten cemetery in a forest and a man's grave with a strange epitaph"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things we must understand when approaching history are certain expressions that seem strange and incomprehensible to us today.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/02\/25\/talbotton-forgotten-cemetery-an-abandoned-sacred-place-in-a-forest\/\">Talbotton Forgotten Cemetery, an abandoned sacred place in a forest<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/06\/26\/an-impressive-funerary-monument-hidden-in-a-lush-forest-in-scotland\/\">An impressive funerary monument hidden in a lush forest in Scotland<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p>Georgia is one of the US states where slavery was in force until the Civil War and was replaced by segregation, which lasted until the 1960s. Yesterday, the Youtube channel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@AdventuresIntoHistory\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sidestep: Adventures Into History<\/a> showed <strong>an exploration of a forgotten cemetery in the middle of a forest, which houses the remains of an African-American family<\/strong>, the Reddings, in Webster County.<\/p>\n<p>One of the graves, belonging to a man born in 1879 and who died in 1909, has an elaborate stone headstone and includes <strong>a curious epitaph: \"A white man's friend.\"<\/strong> It is a phrase that the explorers cannot explain, and which takes us back to a very different time than today:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hidden Headstones And An Unusual Epitaph! Forgotten Cemetery Found!\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pLFLiTgaU3w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can see some screenshots from this video here. We start with <strong>the gravestone I referred to earlier and its strange epitaph<\/strong>. It sounds like a derogatory expression, but it wasn\u2019t at the time. From what I\u2019ve been reading, that expression was used to refer to those African Americans who were friends with <strong>a white man who was, so to speak, their protector or benefactor<\/strong>. For that black person, it was a way of gaining more respect. That would also explain such a richly carved tombstone with a wrought iron fence around it, for a person who died at the age of 30 at a time when black people often lived in poverty.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53999577017_b57a693c5d_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Another grave, this time of a girl who died at the age of 19.<\/strong> Once again, it is a well-crafted tombstone that is well preserved, considering that it is from 1905.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54000893595_b216c2c6fb_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Other tombstones in this cemetery are much simpler.<\/strong> They are on the ground and are gradually being covered by vegetation.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54000711478_b6e4c21c00_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>One of the tombstones is next to a fallen tree.<\/strong> It belongs to a person born in 1896 and died in 1943. There were burials in this cemetery until the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54000893585_f4cd9d8baf_b.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things we must understand when approaching history are certain expressions that seem strange and incomprehensible to us today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19535,16886],"tags":[2049,10431,22707],"class_list":["post-57123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-exploring-portada-eng","category-sacred-places","tag-georgia","tag-united-states","tag-webster-county"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-12 01:56:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}