The Atlantic Slave Trade brought an estimated 10 million slaves to the American continent from the West African countries of Kongo, Nigeria, Ghana, and more. After enduring an arduous journey across the Atlantic Ocean, they were sold and forced to work under extreme conditions on sugar and tobacco plantations in the Caribbean and North America. Slaveholders forced Christianity on their slaves, but many retained the religious practices and customs of their homeland. Anthropological and historical research conducted on the grave markers and headstones at the Olivewood Cemetery in Houston, Texas, confirm this synthesis of Christianity and West Africa religion.
Olivewood Cemetery was purchased ten years after emancipation by a group of former slaves for their dead loved ones. It is also the final resting place of several prominent African American residents, many of whom resided in Freedmen’s Town, an area in the fourth ward along Bayou Bend in Houston. Elias Dibble, the first black ordained Methodist minister in the country and founder of Trinity Methodist Church, began life as a slave and arrived in Houston as one of the many freed slaves seeking opportunity. Wade Hampton Logan, also an early pastor of Trinity and a presiding elder for the Navasota and Marshall Districts of the Methodist Church is buried in the cemetery. They are joined by the community that worked and lived around them including shopkeepers, workers, and laborers. The cemetery is testimony to the presence of the African diaspora in the Houston area. The cemetery contains the grave markers of enslaved who died before General Granger arrived in Galveston on June 19, 1865, to announce all slaves were now free. Several died not knowing that they were in fact, free.
The west coast of Africa supplied one quarter to one-third of the Africans enslaved in the southern states. Several of the graves and headstones in the cemetery contain elements of the Kongo cosmogram, a visual summary of key concepts of Kongo cosmology that resonate with the known religions of the peoples from Angola to Nigeria. One concept is expressed as a diamond or oval shape with four points, which signifies the life cycle: it's beginning at dawn, its progression across the apex of the sun, and sunset into the spirit world at its end. One grave displays a variation of the cosmogram in the slab. It has a hollow diamond shape cut into the front of the slab, and impressions of seashells that were placed there. This diamond shape with four points of the cosmogram represents the world of the living and the dead, and the life progressions from sunrise to sunset.
Another concept of the cosmogram is the many seashells depicted on the graves at Olivewood. In the Kongo belief system, seashells were thought to enclose the souls’ immortal presence or to represent the waterway that acted as a boundary or threshold between this world and the spirit world. The world of the dead is believed to be underwater and the realm of the Bakulu, whose white color marks them as deceased. Shells and stones mark the boundary of this realm that can only be reached by penetrating the two physical barriers, or the transference of energy and the voyage from the world of the living and the world of the dead. When brought to America, this belief system took on another meaning, as the enslaved believed that the same waterway would conduct them back to Africa after death.
The cemetery also contains examples of reverse and upside-down script on grave markers. In the context of the cosmogram and the West African belief system, the verb “to die” translates as “upside-down” or “inverted” – since death was the opposite of life, the name was spelled backward to reflect how they would see it on the “other side.” While this could be attributed to illiteracy among the enslaved, the presence of six such placements indicates an intentional placement of the letters.
Upright pipes attached to grave markers are also present in the cemetery. Within the cosmogram, they are thought to represent the journey from the physical world to the spirit world. It could also represent a way to convey messages to the dead.
While these signs and expressions may seem to reflect a belief system originating in Africa, is it possible that it could equally be a family tradition, conjecture, or coincidence? The markers in of themselves could be an isolated event – absent the fact that evidence of the symbols of the cosmogram is prominent in many cemeteries and yards, homes, and businesses in the southern United States and the Caribbean where the African diaspora was heavy.
In 2000, efforts to reclaim the cemetery from urban expansion and vegetation began with the help of the Descendants of Olivewood non-profit group, historians, researchers, archaeologists, anthropologists, and government funding. Ongoing anthropological evacuations and restorations continue at Olivewood Cemetery, providing more clues and evidence to support a synthesis between West African religion and Christianity. In addition, recovery work is underway to reclaim graves that have been affected by erosion and urban growth with the planning of Interstate 10 and Buffalo Bayou in downtown Houston. In 2019, Olivewood Cemetery, along with six other Houston area sites, have been recognized by UNESCO as a historic site on their Slave Route Project, which is an international registry of locations that were involved with the transatlantic slave trade. This designation has served to protect Olivewood from further damage.
Descendants of Olivewood, Inc. is dedicated to preserving this important site for the benefit and education of future generations. Future plans involve a welcome center and guided walkways and tours for educational purposes.
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