Descendants reinter more than 200 ancestors from Oak Hill Plantation

Time reports that descendants and county officials reinterred more than 200 Black ancestors from two cemeteries on Oak Hill Plantation in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in December 2025.

The graves held tenant farmers, sharecroppers and formerly enslaved people from land once owned by the Hairston family and had been slated for relocation to make way for economic development. County officials told families that moving the remains would better preserve them; descendants joined a planning committee, rejected an early proposal for collective vaults and secured individual graves and markers. Families also plan DNA testing to try to connect remains with living relatives and to trace lineage to African homelands and Indigenous tribes.

Descendants framed the effort as restoring dignity after generations were barred from the land and invoked the nation's history of treating Black people as fractions dating to the 1787 Three-Fifths Compromise. County officials had promised in 2009 to preserve the cemeteries in place, and descendants say it is unclear what changed between 2009 and 2024 even as the reburial concluded.

Key Topics

Culture, Oak Hill Plantation, Pittsylvania County, Hairston Family, Flem Adams Sr, Three-fifths Compromise