In Plain Sight: Illuminating Geer Cemetery at Duke
In Plain Sight: Illuminating Geer Cemetery at Duke
Exhibit running 27 April–30 June 2023 at the Rubinstein Arts Center, 2020 Campus Drive, Durham 27708
Geer Cemetery, founded in 1877 by three African American men, served for over half a century as one of Durham’s most important burial grounds for African Americans who were excluded from burial in white cemeteries. Though long neglected by the city and its institutions, the cemetery’s landscape tells stories of love, faith, mutual aid, entrepreneurship, resistance, and the visible and invisible labor that built this city.
This exhibit presents research and archival images originally created and displayed at Geer Cemetery in 2021 by the nonprofit Friends of Geer Cemetery, volunteers, and descendants. Students in the Spring 2023 course, “Death, Burial, and Justice in the Americas” have curated its new showing at Duke. They created original printed and online content, including new research, conversations with descendants, sensory artworks conveying the experience of being in the cemetery, and reflections about their engagement with the site. Another team of students conducted oral histories on behalf of the Hamilton Hood Foundation in Harris County, Georgia, which is working to preserve an African American burial ground there, Pierce Chapel Cemetery. They also provide an expressive record of their experiences.
“In Plain Sight: Illuminating Geer Cemetery at Duke” is sponsored by Duke Arts, Duke Service-Learning, the Forum for Scholars and Publics, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Duke Office of Durham and Community Affairs, the Durham Black Burial Grounds Collaboratory, and the International Comparative Studies program. Special thanks to the Friends of Geer Cemetery and Bill Fick.