Odd Fellows Cemetery Restoration

Advocacy in Practice

History and Context

Illumination ceremony at Odd Fellows Cemetery. Photo courtesy Knoxville Re-Animation Coalition, Inc

A cemetery is a strange place to start dreaming, and an even stranger place to birth community initiatives. Nevertheless, it was a visit to Odd Fellows Cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee that birthed the Odd Fellows Scholars Program. The Odd Fellows Cemetery served as an African American resting place from 1880 to the mid-twentieth century. The cemetery was established, owned and maintained by four fraternal orders, including the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows. The mission of its original founders was to provide proper burials to Knoxville’s African American community, and especially to the poor, widow and orphan. By the end of the 1930s, Knoxville’s Odd Fellows chapter had almost entirely faded from the community radar. Today, the cemetery lingers almost unrecognizable in a state of disrepair as decades of neglect and increased alienation and displacement at the hands of urban renewal projects have taken their toll.

Knoxville Re-Animation Coalition, Inc (KRC) viewed the cemetery as a means to bridge generational chasms, mobilize the African American community, and familiarize Knoxville’s citizenry with its rich and invaluable African American heritage. Consequently, they initiated two programs in 2009: the Odd Fellows Scholars Program and the Odd Fellows Cemetery Restoration Project. The Odd Fellows Scholars Program was designed to advance the educational skills of the scholars, spark community awareness of Odd Fellows Cemetery, and assist in advocacy efforts to restore the cemetery. The remainder of this essay will focus on the use of anthropology in advocacy efforts to restore the Odd Fellows Cemetery.

Collaboration

To achieve the aforementioned goals, five inner-city 7th grade students from Vine Middle Magnet Performing Arts Academy were interviewed and selected to participate in the Odd Fellows Scholars Program. It was apparent early on that we wanted research to be done by the community for the community. In addition, Kimberly Wren, a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was hired as an instructor to develop the research and writing skills of the scholars, train them in oral presentation, and oversee the production of a written publication highlighting the scholars’ research on the cemetery. This publication would ultimately be made available to the public.

Odd Fellows Cemetery marker. Photo courtesy Knoxville Re-Animation Coalition, Inc

Collaboration began in the classroom where scholars were first taught computer literacy, historical research methods, interviewing techniques, expository writing and oral presentation skills. Students were also introduced to anthropological research design and novel scholarship. They were taught to articulate research questions and hypotheses as well as where to go to determine what kinds of information they might need to address such questions. One student conducted research on embalming practices and age because he noticed a difference in the interval between death and burial between children and adults. He found that babies and small children were not embalmed and typically buried within the first two days after death, whereas adults were embalmed and buried much later.

Scholars were also taught to think critically about the knowledge they received and obtained. They were forced to evaluate their engrained biases and apportion them to categories of use or disuse when addressing certain topics. They were engaged in conversations on the value of knowledge as a source of power in the community. Knowledge was taught as a resource that enabled a sense of belonging, produced societal norms, and influenced world views and the application of those views. This played a significant role in the types of research questions the scholars asked and presented. They understood that their research would be used to advocate for the restoration of the cemetery so they purposed to focus on all walks of life in the cemetery to engage individuals from various walks of life today in their efforts. The scholars wrote and presented research on lawyers, policemen, politicians, businessmen, veterans, everyday people, former slaves and millionaires buried in the cemetery. They also conducted research on cemetery demographics and racism. Much of their research was done using museum and library collections from the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Inc and the East Tennessee History Center. All of this information was and is being used to advocate for the restoration of the cemetery.

Scholars were also encouraged to work independently and collectively on particular projects to see if and how their views might have changed on a subject or event. We utilized a combination of student-teacher and student-student feedback to offer more learning opportunities and constructive criticism. We believe this method enabled students to get a sense of the types of responses and questions they might receive from the public. Ultimately, they were better prepared to answer questions and address community responses to their research.

After meeting with the scholars twice a week for a total of two and half hours over the course of a year, they produced several essays and presentations through research and interviews that illuminated the lives of Knoxville’s historic African American Community. The scholars also presented their work at two community events held by KRC. This collaboration resulted in the creation of alternative narratives and histories of individuals served and buried in the cemetery. It also instilled a sense of pride in the students and the community they engaged. The students and community were truly enthusiastic about problems impacting local communities at the end of the first year of this program.

Community Engagement

Fallen tombstone at Odd Fellows Cemetery. Photo courtesy Knoxville Re-Animation Coalition, Inc

As mentioned above, the scholars obtained living histories from interviews they conducted on elderly members served by the Odd Fellows fraternal order and cemetery. They also interviewed descendants to obtain information about relatives buried in the cemetery. One individual was a librarian who lived in Nashville. He was eager to offer information on his grandmother who raised him. He had a vested interest in the cemetery and wanted to ensure that his grandmother’s plot would be properly maintained. His family and community research were extremely helpful to all of the scholars. The interviews conducted by the scholars fostered community awareness and initiative while simultaneously restoring social capital and networks. The scholars’ research bridged generational chasms between those who experienced first and second hand the social connectedness and dismantling of the community served by the cemetery. In fact, they were able to obtain invaluable historical information about the community during the Odd Fellows service from one individual who died shortly after their interview. She was 103 years of age.

The scholars’ research also demonstrated that a rich and valuable history exists in the community that should be memorialized and protected. Their public presentations received much support and encouragement from the surrounding community. The individuals at the community gatherings were both informed and informative. They voiced their desire and willingness to contribute to advocacy efforts to restore the cemetery via word of mouth and by distributing the Odd Fellows Scholars Program 2009–10 publication. By creating an avenue for community engagement in which the achievements of the African American community were valorized, the community was able to begin to re-imagine its future as one of collectiveness, opportunity, and hope. Things were not always the way they are today and they don’t have to stay that way.

The Odd Fellows Scholars Program continues to make knowledge concerning their restoration efforts available and accessible to the public through community presentations and a web presence. Changing the sense of hopelessness present in elderly individuals who watched once sacred spaces go into disrepair and giving them and emerging generations of Black Knoxvillians a sense of purpose and possibility will require continued initiatives on several fronts. We believe that combating hopelessness on the community/neighborhood level should take the form of a series of cultural animation projects that would allow African Americans to reconnect to their past while building the intellectual and organizational skills needed to help them lead productive lives in the future.

One can measure the success of this program by the level of connectedness the scholars and the community now feel toward the Odd Fellows Cemetery. In addition, four of the five students that participated in the program were admitted to Knox County Schools STEM Academy. We believe their participation in this research program played a role in advancing their educational goals.

This essay concludes that there are several avenues through which anthropologists can actively participate in community initiatives and community building. We argue for more purposeful collaborations of anthropologists in advocacy efforts seeing that both anthropological research methods and anthropology’s multifaceted approach to the human experience enable a more critical and nuanced approach to community issues.

Kimberly Tenese Wren is a PhD candidate in biological anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She served as the instructor for the Knoxville Re-Animation Coalition, Inc. Odd Fellows Scholars Program from April 2009 until May 2010 and is currently on the board.

Stephen Scruggs is the president and co-founder of Knoxville Re-Animation Coalition, Inc. His intention for this coalition and the Odd Fellows Scholars Program is to produce community awareness of Knoxville’s African American history while simultaneously rescuing Odd Fellows Cemetery.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/03/07/odd-fellows-cemetery-restoration/