“Lynn Rainville takes us on a walking tour of African American cemeteries in central Virginia.
“Lynn Rainville takes us on a walking tour of African American cemeteries in central Virginia. She tells us about individual lives marked by headstones, fieldstones, and depressions in the sacred spaces where they continue to be part of a living community” said James Davidson, a professor at the University of Florida about Professor Lynn Rainville ahead of her appearance at Carytown’s Chop Suey later this week .
Professor Rainville will read from her book Hidden Histories at Chop Suey Books on Thursday, March 26th at 6 PM. She currently serves as the Humanities Research Professor at Sweet Briar College here in Virginia, where she has gained experience as an archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and ethnographer.
The multifaceted perspective that she has adopted from her work has also informed her study of several historic African American cemeteries in Central Virginia, which is the focus of Hidden Histories.
Originally published in 2014 by University of Virginia Press, the work has received critical acclaim from scholars and Black history enthusiasts alike.
One of Rainville’s main sticking points is these Black cemeteries have value for the current generation. According to her, the preservation of funerary traditions, gravestones, and cemetery landscapes can provide future generations not just with an understanding of past attitudes towards death and community, but also with a window into how family networks, gender relations, religious beliefs, and local neighborhoods all worked in years past in Central Virginian Black communities.
Rainville’s focus on local content “derives universal insights into history, heritage, memory, and preservation”, according to Davidson.
“Hidden History presents a well-written, engaging, and at times truly revelatory study. Her careful research was conducted over a span of several years, which allows her observations to go beyond the superficial and the obvious” said Davidson in praise of Rainville’s book. “Rainville’s work is an exemplar of the best sort of research.”
The work takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining anthropological, archaeological, historical, oral historical, sociological, geological, and environmental techniques and theories to mold one cohesive account of historic Black gravesites in Virginia.
Rainville says that these combined perspectives are all required to understand the cultural and environmental context of the cemeteries, and to uncover the cultural and religious traditions that produced the burial sites.
“She tells their stories, in slavery and freedom, while walking through their cemeteries, each of which connects individuals to families, locality, and region. Even the cemetery itself has a life defended against waves of migration and development.” says Michael Blakey, a professor at the College of William and Mary.
All of the stories in Rainville’s book are richly textured with detailed information about each cemetery and its community. “Traversing these juxtapositions is Rainville’s personal twenty-year journey of encounters with these enduring yet vulnerable features on the intimate historic landscape of African-Americans in Central Virginia.”
Join Professor Rainville at Chop Suey Books – 2913 W Cary St – Mar 26 at 6:00pm
