PALS Project Honors Historic African American Cemetery

Ahead of a planned mixed-use development on land owned by Emory Grove Methodist Church, students from a Partnership in Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS) course helped identify unmarked grave sites to honor the community’s history while preparing the land for the new project. Emory Grove is one of Montgomery County, Md.’s oldest African American churches, and this project will help protect the gravesites from development. 

“In a darkened classroom tucked in the University of Maryland’s Chemistry Building, students cluster around a monitor to analyze a run of shallow, wavy lines punctuated by an occasional upward jump. But what looks like possible signs of life on an EKG is actually potential evidence of the dead, lying deep below an expanse of grass and asphalt just east of Gaithersburg, Md.

“The students are searching for unmarked graves that disappeared from view—and later, memory—with the passage of time and circumstance on the grounds of one of Montgomery County’s oldest African American churches. Commissioned by the historic Emory Grove United Methodist Church with the support of the county and UMD’s Partnership in Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS) program, the project aims to determine the location of the church’s early, forgotten gravesites in advance of redevelopment plans set to reclaim a once-vibrant African American hamlet.”

Read the full article in Maryland Today.

Image Caption: Undergraduate and graduate students in UMD’s field geophysics course use ground penetrating radar to look for possible graves at Emory Grove church, one of Montgomery County’s oldest African American churches. The project is part of the university’s Partnership in Action Learning in Sustainability program.

Photos by Catherine Madsen