Wealth in people and the value of historic Oberlin Cemetery, Raleigh, North Carolina

Dru McGill, John K. Millhauser, Alicia McGill, Vincent Melomo, Del Bohnenstiehl and John Wall

Economic Anthropology, 2020, vol. 7, issue 2, 176-189

Abstract: In its origins as a concept, wealth in people depended on the circulation and accumulation of rights and obligations among and over the living. But if a person is a source of wealth, what happens when the person dies? Would the person be excised from the relationships upon which wealth in people depends, or might his or her wealth remain accessible to the living? To address this question, we present the case of Oberlin Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina. The cemetery was the core of Oberlin Village, a freedperson's African American community founded in the mid‐nineteenth century. Today, development threatens historic resources surrounding the cemetery, but a community organization founded by descendants and neighbors has emerged to preserve and promote their heritage. We are a group of anthropologists, geologists, and historians who live and work near Oberlin Village and who collaborate to help this organization achieve its goals. Here we report how our efforts to document the cemetery's history have bolstered their advocacy and validated their claims to wealth in the people buried there. Thus we show how wealth in people extends to the dead when graves and the people within them are potent sources of value for the living.

Date: 2020
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