The River Road Moses Cemetery is Exhibit A in Structural Racism

As much as I have despised the phrase "structural racism," because it is something I never understood other than as a rhetorical jab directed by leftists against whites, my attendance at the July 6, 2020 press conference and rally at the River Road Moses Cemetery helped me to see what "structural racism" actually looks like and what the adverse impact is for all of us.

A coalition of groups lead by the Macedonia Moses Baptist Church asked Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich to have Bethesda Storage to stop excavation at 5204 River Road near the Capital Crescent Trail overpass. Spokespeople at the rally stated that Elrich went silent. He failed to exercise real leadership.

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom showed up in a brightly colored theatrical jacket, and he created a potential problem for everyone including me. I had him pegged as a problem the minute I laid eyes on him. He acted as if he had studied the famous mural of John Brown, who was hanged by the neck until dead in Harper's Ferry. He reenacted that painting, and stretched out both arms in a cockeyed manner several times, entered between the construction fence, trespassed onto private property without permission, and disrupted the work crew.

The foreman got on his cell phone, and within 15 minutes or so about a half a dozen police cars with sirens and lights showed up. Then came the bull horn announcement, "There will be no warning. We will arrest you for trespassing." A middle aged white man wearing a COVID-19 compliant bandana over his face came forward from the crowd of perhaps 50 or so with two digital salutes and put them in angered defiance into the windshield of the police car, where the announcement and warning was issued.

The press conference and rally was now at the potential tipping point from becoming a protest with conflict or worse. It was not necessary. It was idiotic. The press conference and rally had succumbed to what I had feared a month earlier when River Road Moses Cemetery first came to my attention. I have nothing in common with a clown masquerading as a rabbi or a social justice warrior deliberately provoking the police for a response.

I was able to de escalate tensions when the police showed up. I was the first one approached, and was asked if I was "the leader." I was stunned. That joke for a rabbi had put me at potential risk. I told the policeman that I thanked God for him and his role and was anguished by the threats that were being directed at his profession today as a result of organizations like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the other Marxists groups unleashing lawlessness. I then explained that just one person - only one person - had provoked the problem by trespassing, which produced a half a dozen police cars to show up.

And, my reading of some in the crowd and especially the rabbi were spot on. I do not know if he was arrested, but he was nowhere to be seen not long after the police showed up. My B.S. meter was working, and I spotted it. The rabbi was the B.S. that produced the stink. He came to perform street theater, then vanished for others to be engaged by police, to orchestrate the secondary level of conflict, and then for them - frankly, the "useful idiots" as described in a Marxist playbook - to receive the blows in the aftermath he had singularly provoked.

Herzfeld's "riots to go" and clown like theatrics and incitement, as I viewed them, were not appropriate and definitely not needed, in my opinion. The crowd, as far as I could assess, was far too naive to see it for what it was. They had been played. After the police came, his name was repeatedly invoked and thanked as he hopped up and down and pointed over the chain link fence while shouting, "The crime scene is over there!"

If the crime scene was "over there," then both Elrich and Friedson should be handcuffed along with every member of MNCP&PC for aiding and abetting in the crime, not to mention conspiracy to deprive a people of their history. But, the police did not come for them. They came for the crowd attending the press conference and rally.

I came as an outsider to the issue, a native Washingtonian and historian, with no agenda or axe to grind, and saw it as described. I saw it quite differently from many. Many, no doubt, saw Herzfeld, as a welcomed supporter of their cause. I saw him as an actor with no vested interest and nothing but trouble, which is what he provoked in order to potentially further victimize the victims.

I went on to explain to the police officer, who stopped to question me first, that if these deceased Africans had been French Catholics, German Jews, or Scottish Presbyterians there would be no rally here to call attention to an ongoing injustice. I explained that several times a year, I am able to visit my parents' grave sites in peace and quiet. These people of African descent at the rally are not able to do that. To grieve and mourn. To remember and to retell stories. To be thankful. I went on to tell the policeman that I do not know if a crime was committed here, but that I do know, that the excavations even on private property are morally wrong given the site's history.

"This is a crime scene, oh Lord!" was sung by Dr. Karen Wilson-Ama'Echefu. It was moving since her voice penetrated right into the soul. There was a burial ceremony with invocations and libation offerings done by Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, the daughter of author Dick Gregory, and it was truly remarkable to see, and frankly brought me to tears.

But, is the excavation site a crime scene? These burial sites, or burial dumping grounds as they became over time, should have been clearly surveyed prior to the current excavation and during the period when Dr. Tauber and his group were developing the Westwood Tower Apartments and offices at 5401 Westbard Avenue across from Westwood Shopping Center years back.

So, the angst among those of African descent, and their supporters, aware of this failure to respect grave sites is justified. The high drama, the crime of trespassing, and whatever other misdemeanors that followed, however, are not. Beneath the lyrical rhetoric of "this is a crime scene, oh Lord!" is the concealed anger and pain of being of African descent in a country initially established by and for those of European descent. I have come to understand that "this is a crime scene" is a factual reference to why those people were buried there in the first place, not just that the excavation was taking place over the unmarked graves of Africans.

The fact is, the River Road Moses Cemetery was a dumping ground for dead slaves from three plantations along River Road as well as the final destination of dead Africans from dug up graves in Tenleytown. The River Road Moses Cemetery also served a historically black community that existed in that location for over 100 years.

Dr. Michael Blakey, the main archeologist for the New York City African Burial Ground, spoke. And, he said that a burial site survey study was not completed. There is a serious moral issue here with excavations for footings taking place prior to surveying and identifying all human remains.

Dr. Blakey made it clear that Elrich’s silence regarding the stop work request was viewed as devaluing those, who were laid to rest many years ago. Had these Africans been Americans of European descent - it was clear to me - that there would be no desecration of the dead laid to rest there. The site, instead, would be treated like an archaeological dig with academics supervising others beneath tented areas working the ground with a hand spade and fine brush in search of human bones and relics. And, no doubt a television crew would be there for the discovery of the century for the next docudrama about our ancestry. But, that is not the case here. These were Africans. Some were property prior to Abraham Lincoln. And, after the Emancipator, these souls of African descent were cast aside, and kept apart - separate and very unequal in every aspect of opportunity, respect, and human dignity.

When he died in 1982, the former Potomac resident Dr. Laszlo Tauber, the developer of Westwood Towers where the graves of Americans of African descent now rest beneath a parking lot, shielded his sizable assets accumulated over a lifetime behind the North Bethesda, Maryland based Laszlo N. Tauber Family Foundation. This story, however, does not start with Dr. Tauber given the paper trail that exists, as well as the trail that has been concealed, as well as shredded.

Every citizen of Montgomery County, Maryland should demand and expect better leadership coming from Montgomery County Government, its County Executive Marc Elrich, and its County Council representative for the district Andrew Friedson.

We are all offended when grave stones are toppled or spray painted with insulting symbols. We should similarly all be offended by the excavations and organizational indifference and incompetence. No more excuses. No more finger pointing. No more viewing this problem as an obstacle to progress. It is an opportunity. Marc Elrich, take the lead. Andrew Friedson, it is in your district. You need to be in the meetings. Put the salve on this open wound. Bring healing. Let justice roll down like a mighty river, and heal the hurt that exists in this county.

Today, I understand "structural racism." Everything about the River Road Moses Cemetery is about structural racism. Structural racism is a government and agency propped up phenomenon driven by development and progress for privatized profit and the desire for increased tax revenues. The threat of the billy clubs, pepper spray, and unmuzzled police dogs are just the front line of ensuring acceptance and conformity with this abhorrent immorality.