Mountain View Cemetery Black Historical past Month Tour

Mountain View Cemetery’s 2018 Black Historical past Month tour started at 10 a.m., on February twenty fourth, in entrance of the cemetery’s administrative workplace. I arrived a couple of minutes early and simply discovered a spot to park. (Free and simple parking is to me as uncommon and worthwhile as pirate-treasure.) I noticed folks stroll contained in the workplace, and a lady stood within the foyer with a clipboard. I assumed that the girl was the tour organizer, and if not, a clipboard made anybody look official and attention-worthy. I adopted the others up the steps and inside.

I opened the huge door and paused, not desirous to bump one other one who stood contained in the doorway. I waited as that individual moved, after which I slid inside. I felt grateful for the heat. The solar fell warmly, and I dressed warmly, however not warmly sufficient. The temperature hovered between 55 and 60 levels. I needed I had a shawl so as to add to my long-sleeve shirt, sweater, jacket, and gloves.

“Signal the clipboard to get on our mailing record.” The lady lifted her clipboard into the air. My eyes adopted the upward motion, however stored going, to the vaulted ceiling. I knew nothing in regards to the architectural model that surrounded us however guessed that it was Victorian, or Gothic. I observed that behind me stood a miniature mannequin of the cemetery. I famous the tiered format of the grounds, or the mannequin’s approach of representing important modifications in elevation. Both approach, the cemetery expanded over the close by hillsides. In truth, the mannequin confirmed minimal flat floor.

Extra folks arrived exterior. People who stood with me within the foyer had been a mixture of ages, women and men, black and white. If I had been to guess, I’d say that there have been just a few extra girls than males, and about 30 folks whole. I anticipated that the tour would start quickly, given the nearness to the hour, and went again exterior. I discovered a sunlit patch of sidewalk and stood and tried to disregard the chilly.

“There can be vans, or you may drive your self, or you may journey with one in every of us,” Lydia stated. Lydia was the girl with the clipboard, professionally dressed for a Saturday. She had a shawl, which I envied.
“Can we stroll?” Somebody expressed what others doubtless felt — the expectation that the tour was a strolling tour.

“You may, however we are going to wind our approach up and round. You will must observe our caravan, and it is fairly a trek.” I spied the closest white van with the cemetery brand on the aspect and edged towards it. “Anna is right here,” Lydia sang. “Good.”

I regarded for ‘Anna,’ however didn’t see her. Anna blended into the background till she spoke. She didn’t elevate her voice, and the group quieted. Anna launched herself as a docent and tour-guide. Completed, she moved from the place she stood on the steps subsequent to Lydia.

I edged nearer to the van, however Lydia stated that we had a “cease, simply over right here.” We moved just a few yards from the workplace steps, and Lydia pointed to a stone construction behind her, about 200 yards away. 5 – 6 rows of enormous, sq., stacked sections rose 4 or 5 sections excessive. I didn’t know the cemetery-term for the construction, which clearly entombed stays. I discovered later that the construction was a mausoleum. “The final time we gave this tour, final yr, we stated that this cemetery was by no means segregated,” Lydia stated. “We had been mistaken. We solely simply discovered the reality, from data we uncovered.”

In 1955, or thereabouts, Clara Mae Lengthy, a black lady, supposed to put her husband to relaxation inside a mausoleum at Mountain View Cemetery. The cemetery denied Ms. Lengthy’s request, as a result of that individual mausoleum was put aside for whites. Ms. Lengthy sued, and the ensuing case, Lengthy v. Mountain View Cemetery Affiliation (1955), led to a California Courtroom of Enchantment. The Courtroom of Enchantment upheld the decrease courtroom’s ruling, affirming that although Civil Code Sections 51 and 52 ensured all residents equal entry to public lodging, the legislation’s provisions didn’t embrace cemeteries.
Nevertheless, the presiding decide wrote that he couldn’t resist a phrase of protest:

“I can not consider {that a} man’s mortal stays will disintegrate any much less peaceably due to the shut proximity of the physique of a member of one other race, and in that inevitable disintegration I’m certain that the pigmentation of the pores and skin can not lengthy endure. It strikes me that the carrying of racial discrimination into the burial grounds is a very silly type of human conceitedness and intolerance. If life doesn’t achieve this, the common fellowship of dying ought to educate humility. The nice individuals who insist on the racial segregation of what’s mortal in man could also be shocked to be taught when their very own lives finish that God has reserved no racially unique place for them within the hereafter.”

I felt uplifted by this story and the decide’s sentiment, if not by the Courtroom’s choice. I preferred that Lydia and Anna selected to convey the story and the decide’s assertion to our consideration. Others murmured their approval, and somebody chuckled on the scenario’s audacity. On that observe, it was time to board the tour-caravan.

En route, our driver defined that the cemetery stretched for 230 acres. That sounded massive, however I felt extra impressed by the number of headstones and monuments on show – modest ones, ornate ones, and ones laden with unfamiliar symbols. It took lower than two minutes to wind our approach as much as our first cease, and that timing remained true for the tour’s entirety. We visited the grave of native hero Captain William T. Shorey, a.okay.a. The Black Ahab, and native legend Bobby Hutton, the primary member of the Black Panthers. At every cease, we discovered about individuals who enriched or affected the lives of many and thus, did the identical for Oakland’s historical past.

I got here away with a way of what I would really like my eulogy to say, a realization I valued. However, in reality, I attended the tour for a function. I sought Virginia Prentiss’s last resting place and a solution to a query on her behalf: How might Ms. Prentiss, a big member of Oakland’s historic black group and Jack London’s surrogate mom, be laid to relaxation with out a gravestone?
“Virginia Prentiss was buried right here,” Anna stated, on our third of fourth cease. She gestured to the bottom. “In all probability about proper… there.” Anna pointed to the toes of a fellow tour-goer. He laughed and took his cap off and pressed it to his chest.

In that second, I felt grateful for the cemetery’s well-kept data. In any other case, we merely stood on the prime of a hill, below a tree, just a few toes from a burial web site for Elks-Membership members. The remainder of what Anna stated about Ms. Prentiss, I already knew: that Ms. Prentiss was born a slave in 1832, escaped troopers of the Civil Battle, married Alonzo Prentiss, and located her technique to California, the place she raised her kids and have become a mother-figure to an icon of American literature. She died in 1922.

I needed to method Anna as she stood below Ms. Prentiss’s tree, however determined to attend. Simply previous to the tour’s finish, and after I thought I might not tolerate my cold-induced sniffles, we discovered Alonzo Prentiss’s grave. Mr. Prentiss lay within the veteran’s part, close to a Civil Battle memorial and burial plot.

“Why weren’t Alonzo and Jennie Prentiss buried collectively?” I requested Anna as quickly as I noticed a gap to method her, because the tour concluded, and the others departed. Anna shrugged and stated one thing like, nobody expects to survive their kids. I remembered then that the Prentiss kids died younger. So, their plot had room for mom and kids solely. Then, I requested my massive query.

“I do know,” Anna agreed, “why spend the cash on a plot and never embrace a gravestone?” She shrugged. “I do not know the reply.”

At that second a lady with owl-rimmed glasses, who rode in Anna’s automobile from one place to the following on the tour, interrupted us. Uncertain that I hid my disappointment in her reply properly sufficient, I left Anna to climb again up the hill with the elk statue at its peak. I shunned the paths for the direct route, questioning about graveyard customs alongside the way in which. Was it disrespectful to stroll over a grave? Was it poor kind to snack in a graveyard? One mustn’t decide a flower that grew in a graveyard, I felt, (although I’m not superstitious). I questioned what Ms. Prentiss would take into consideration Black Historical past Month, figuring out that she considered whites as ungodly, given their un-Christian remedy of black folks.

I reached the unmarked plot for the second time and felt grateful for the solitude. I took footage and hoped to share them with different Oakland-history buffs, who can also really feel unsettled by Ms. Prentiss’s unsung standing within the cemetery. I resolved to return to Mountain View Cemetery, maybe for one in every of their different excursions. I hoped to construct on what I knew about Ms. Prentiss:

• Virginia Prentiss died at round 91 years outdated, at Napa State Hospital
• Jack London’s will included provisions for Ms. Prentiss’s burial bills
• Charmian Kitteridge, Jack London’s second spouse, was the executor of his property
• Ms. Prentiss died on Ms. Kitteridge’s 51st birthday, in 1922

Because of the tour, I discovered that the wealth of historical past that resides at Mountain View Cemetery can’t be overemphasized. In fact, one additionally can not overemphasize the wealth of data that resides on the web, which supplied the breadcrumbs that led me to the cemetery. Nevertheless, the web lacks a spot the place you may place your toes on the bottom and stand in honor and surprise of what lies beneath. Mountain View Cemetery gives free, bi-monthly excursions. Costume warmly, or in accordance with the web.