Originally published in the Spring 2022 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 68, printed April 21. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Spring 2022 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

By Phil Wilayto

An organization called the Coalition to Save Historic Thoroughfare has announced plans to protest what it says is the ongoing desecration of Black and indigenous cemeteries in Thoroughfare, an unincorporated community in western Prince William County in Northern Virginia.

The protest is scheduled to take place at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, April 23, across from The Farm Brewery at Broad Run, 16015 John Marshall Highway in Broad Run, Va.

The Farm Brewery now owns the historic Scott Cemetery, one of three burial grounds in the area the coalition says are being threatened by developers.

According to a press release announcing the protest, the coalition formed after “… developers purchased land containing the three major Thoroughfare cemeteries and, early in 2021, destroyed the Scott Cemetery, blocked access to the Potters Field Cemetery, and threatened the Fields/Allen Cemetery with development.”

The release states that The Farm Brewery purchased property that includes the Scott Cemetery “… and despite several cease-anddesist orders from Prince William County, the brewery has repeatedly bulldozed, graded and landscaped the cemetery, and currently is trying to claim that the Scott Cemetery does not even exist.”

The coalition maintains that the Scott Cemetery was listed in 1966 on a U.S. Geological Survey map and, in the late 1990s, was listed by Prince William County as containing 75 to 100 graves.

According to coalition spokesperson Frank Washington, “Slaves, freed slaves, freedmen/freedwomen, and Native-Americans who worked and lived on the land of Thoroughfare, are under the threat of having their final sacred resting places decimated or completely removed by encroaching developers.”

The Defender emailed The Farm Brewery asking for a comment on the coalition’s allegations, but had not received a response by presstime, three days after the request.

According to a historical marker titled “Free People of Color at Thoroughfare” erected in 2004 by the Prince William County Historical Commission, African-American, Native American and mixed ancestry families migrated to the area after the Civil War and, along with local formerly enslaved people, acquired parts of former plantations, built homes and established the farming community of Thoroughfare, which prospered through the 1940s. In 1909 members of the community built Oakrum Baptist Church on donated land.

For more information, visit the Facebook page “Coalition To Save Historic Thoroughfare – A Town Under Siege.”

To donate to the coalition, see “Save Historic Thoroughfare Cemeteries” at: GoFundMe.com.