Over the past few weeks, I have written of the exhumations of two residents (former and current) of Congressional Cemetery. Today, we turn to the largest mass exhumation that the cemetery ever witnessed.
It happened in 1927, when a group of Chinese citizens up and down the eastern seaboard decided to return family members of theirs who had been buried in this country to their homeland for reburial. In Washington, this project was overseen by the On Leong Chinese Merchants’ Association, whose leader, Charley Moy, can be seen above.
On March 15, the health department issued the appropriate permits, and about 10 men came to Congressional to begin work. Beyond the onerous task before them, they also had to deal with a large number of curious neighbors. In the end, after only a few of those interred had been removed from the ground, work stopped, and it was not until March 17, after a protest to the police by Charlie Soo ––usually referred to as “the mayor of Chinatown”–– that a police detachment was sent to the cemetery to keep away the sightseers.
Work began on March 18 at 11 a.m., and continued until 5 p.m. During that time, the Washington Evening Star attempted to get a picture of the process. It did not go well, as an article published that evening under the headline “Chinese Demand Cemetery Guards” noted:
Today, when a photographer attempted to take a picture from the public road in the cemetery while in his automobile passing the scene, he was met with a furious reception. The gray-bearded watchman ran to the edge of the barricade and motioned the automobile away.
Under the subheading “One Hurls Plank” the article continues:
The Chinese looked up from their work and started in a concerted rush for the automobile. One grabbed up a plank and hurled it though the air toward the machine, which just eluded the missile. The photographer had clicked his camera too soon to get the full action of the scene, and felt it was not conducive to continued good health for him to remain long enough for a second “shot.”
This is also the end of the article. One can only assume that the rest of the work went undisturbed, and the rest of the exhumation went as planned; the remains of 66 countrymen and women were packed into the appropriate boxes and shipped halfway around the world to be interred in Canton as their ancestors wanted it.
In total, about a thousand bodies from the eastern seaboard made this journey. It was the first time in ten years that such an exhumation was made, and may well have been the last time. There are no further articles about such activities.