Over the past eighteen months, the Mountain Heritage Folk School has set out on a journey both humbling and profound: to identify the unmarked and unknown graves of African Americans in Hardy County, including those of people who were once enslaved.
This work has taken us across many miles — up hillsides, through tangled forests, and into places where history lingers quietly in the land. Along the way, we’ve met the expected challenges and a fair number of surprises, too. Our project was ambitious, and truthfully, we didn’t accomplish every goal we set. With the journey came moments of joy, moments of disappointment, and many lessons we couldn’t have anticipated at the outset.
One reminder that has carried me through came from a friend who said: when you’re working with underrepresented histories and uncomfortable truths like slavery, sometimes the greatest accomplishment is simply to still be in the game. To that I say, Amen.
In that spirit of perseverance and sharing, we’ve put together a layperson’s toolkit for anyone who feels called to begin a similar project. Whether your reasons are deeply personal, community-driven, or rooted in curiosity, we hope this resource will give you a starting point. Inside, you’ll find not only practical tips but also reflections on navigating the sensitive aspects of this work. While we wrote it out of our own unique path in Hardy County, much of it is transferable to other communities and contexts.
We offer it with open hands and open hearts — may it help you, as it has helped us, to keep walking, to keep searching, and above all, to keep remembering.