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Across the United States, groups of grassroots volunteers gather in overgrown, systemically neglected cemeteries. As they rake, clean headstones, and research silenced histories, they offer care to individuals who were denied basic rights and forms of belonging in life and in death. Cemetery Citizens is the first book-length study of this emerging form of social justice work. It focuses on how racial disparities shape the fates of the dead, and asks what kinds of repair are still possible. Drawing on interviews, activist anthropology, poems, and drawings, Adam Rosenblatt takes us to gravesite reclamation efforts in three prominent American cities.
Cemetery Citizens dives into the ethical quandaries and practical complexities of cemetery reclamation, showing how volunteers build community across social boundaries, craft new ideas about citizenship and ancestry, and expose injustices that would otherwise be suppressed. Ultimately, Rosenblatt argues that an ethic of reclamation must honor the presence of the dead—treating them as fellow cemetery citizens who share our histories, landscapes, and need for care.
"Rosenblatt's book brings us up close and personal and into the beauty, yes beauty of these spaces, as well as the everyday lives of people, families, and communities focused on gravesite restoration. A fascinating view from an active participant in the reclamation of institutionally neglected and historically marginalized cemeteries. An important read for anyone interested in place-making, ancestry, preservation, American history, and Black cemeteries as sites of knowledge and public engagement." —Antoinette T. Jackson, University of South Florida, founder and director of The Black Cemetery Network
"In graveyards where roots entangle the remains of the dead, 'cemetery citizens' work to clear the land and reclaim the memory of the marginalized who are buried there. Armed with shovels and rakes, this labor entails 'scrappy care,' but it is also driven by desires and politics of multiple kinds. Going literally into the weeds of this work 'revising' the past, Rosenblatt unearths the complex terrain at three African American cemeteries undergoing restoration. As analytically powerful as it is poetically ethnographic, Cemetery Citizens is stunningly profound in addressing how relations with the dead can be both remade and re-broken." —Anne Allison, author of Being Dead Otherwise
"Rosenblatt's work on Cemetery Citizens profoundly shifted my perspective, not only about African American cemeteries but about all such resting places, including those in my own community. I now understand that cemeteries are more than grounds of repose; they are vital links that connect familial, historical, and cultural threads across generations." —Marc Friedman, Black Books + Black Minds
"Rosenblatt's book is stunning in how it deals with considerations of the power of place, personal and communal identity, propriety, dignity, and sacredness while also grappling with the realities of discrimination and structural violence. It invites readers to reconsider their own assumptions, actions, and relationships with history. More than that, the stories of the cemetery citizens whom Rosenblatt works alongside are told with a depth of emotion that is irresistible. Indeed, this is what it means to engage with the living legacy of the dead." —Dusty Marie Dye, Journal of Southern History
"Cemetery Citizens is an exquisitely written, accessible, and unique contribution to a mounting literature on social justice, advocacy, and death—a must-read for any taphophile or would-be cemetery citizen." —Kaylee P. Alexander, Mortality
"[Cemetery Citizens] is an important contribution to the growing field of cemetery studies, and it moves the conversation in a new and significant direction. The volume is illustrated with Rosenblatt's poems and sketches. Recommended. "—R. F. Veit, CHOICE
"Rosenblatt's book enriches and complicates our understanding of America's burial places and centers the cemetery citizen as an active participant in the critical and complex social justice work aimed at revising or rehabilitating these important places." —Richard Veit, American Ethnologist
"Rosenblatt's book provides a starting point for audiences interested in cemetery social justice, cemeteries as sites of struggle, cemeteries as archives, cemeteries as catalysts for activism, why people choose to volunteer their time in service to marginalized cemeteries, and cemeteries as sites of public history and public history practice, among other topics." —Dallas Hanbury, Journal of African American History
"Cemetery Citizens is a vital contribution to the study of cemeteries and public memory. It speaks to scholars, practitioners, and community members alike, offering inspiration as well as a challenge: to view cemeteries not as silent ruins but as living sites of memory, justice, and repair." —Jennifer Shaffer Merry, Markers
"Rosenblatt's book is not only engaging, but it shifts the historiography of cemeteries away from the iconography of material culture to community activism and representation. Through reviewing how populations interact with cemeteries, Cemetery Citizens opens up new avenues in the world of cemetery research." —Bridget Donahue-Farrell, The Public Historian