During An Epidemic In 1714 The Death Of Cicely, Young, Black And Enslaved Has Lessons That Resonate In Today’s Pandemic
What I believe to be the oldest surviving gravestone for a Black person in the Americas memorializes an enslaved teenager named Cicely.
Over 1.4 million people have died from COVID-19 so far this year. How history memorializes them will reflect those we most value. CC BY-ND
Cicely’s body is interred across from Harvard’s Johnston Gate in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She died in 1714 during a measles epidemic brought to the college by a student after the summer recess of 1713. Another tombstone in the same burial ground remembers Jane, an enslaved woman who died in 1741 during an outbreak of diphtheria, or “throat distemper.”
A grave marker for an enslaved woman named Jane uses the archaic ‘1740/1’ Julian calendar notation to denote her death in early 1741.
Nicole Maskiell, CC BY-ND
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