“Remembrance: Reading of the Names” Ceremony/video production by Father Patrick Delahanty
On a cold and windy February afternoon in St. Louis Cemetery, the names of 1,630 Black Catholics — buried in mostly unmarked graves — were read aloud during a remembrance ceremony.
Reading the names is an “act of remembrance,” said Archbishop Shelton J. Fabre, addressing a group of more than 100 people who gathered in the cemetery Feb. 24.
“Their lives had dignity. Their lives had value. They mattered,” he said. “Speaking them aloud reminds us of this and allows our community to symbolically reclaim and connect to the humanity that we all share.”
The “Remembrance: Reading of the Names” ceremony is the result of a 13-month project to find the names of Black people buried in the once-segregated section of St. Louis Cemetery, 1167 Barret Ave., between 1867 and 1937.
Deacon Ned Berghausen, who serves at St. Agnes Church and who led the effort, collaborated with members of the Sister Thea Bowman Society for Racial Solidarity, the (Un)Known Project and the Center for Interfaith Relations to organize the ceremony.
“There’s some power to speaking their names and calling them to mind to remember they existed and mattered,” said Deacon Berghausen during an interview before the event. “Names are profoundly important. We hear in the Scriptures that God calls us by name. It’s connected to our personhood.”
Burying people in unmarked graves sends a message that the individuals don’t matter, said Deacon Berghausen.
“We hope this ceremony begins to restore some of the dignity deprived these members of the church in life and in death,” he said.
He also hopes that finding their names helps recover more about their identities, he said.
Deacon Berghausen has compiled the name, age, gender, birth date and date of burial of all 1,630 individuals.
Another volunteer, Rosemary McAdams, a parishioner of Good Shepherd Church, has created family trees for each individual on ancestry.com. The hope is that their descendants might find them, Deacon Berghausen said.
“It’s difficult for Black Americans to discover their roots because of the effects of slavery. … Finding my roots has been important in discovering who I am,” he noted.
The information about people buried in St. Louis Cemetery may help their descendants “discover their ancestry and their stories,” he said.
That discovery is important for the church as well, he said. In recognizing that “Black Catholic history is Catholic history, uncovering the lives of these people helps us to uncover the bigger story of who we are as a Church,” he said.
During the ceremony, Archbishop Fabre said that among those buried in unmarked graves is one of the city’s first Black doctors, at least 35 veterans of the Civil War and World War I, and a couple recognized as agents of the Underground Railroad.
James Madison Smith Sr. and his wife Catherine “Kitty” Smith, formerly enslaved Catholics, were recently recognized as agents of the movement to help enslaved people reach freedom. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service announced in September 2023 that the Smiths’ burial site would be listed in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
“These people, who rest here, supported each other in faith during enslavement and in the struggle to be free. … We recognize their faith, their perseverance and their lives as models for our own times,” said the archbishop.
Archbishop Fabre joined members of the community and leaders, including Mayor Craig Greenberg and Congressman Morgan McGarvey, in reading the names.
Among those who read the names was Deborah Wade, a member of St. Martin de Porres Church.
“It was one of the most powerful things I’ve done,” said Wade during an interview a day after the ceremony. “It still fills me with emotions. To be able to recognize and call out the names of people who were buried so disrespectfully” was an opportunity to “call them back into existence.”
Wade said walking down the small hill to arrive at the east slope where the unmarked graves lie, she felt a “distinctive separation.”
“To cross that boundary was powerful in itself,” she said.
Hearing the names of the children being read moved her, as well, Wade noted.
“When the name of the first child was read, it brought tears to my eyes to recognize that child was buried without a marker,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “I can only hope and pray that her parents were there to be able to mourn her.”
Deacon Berghausen is planning an effort to erect headstones for the 35 veterans as well as a monument with all 1,630 names.
Thank God for all for working on this for it means more than you know to Black Catholics who are losing their church and maybe their religion and no one cares.