With the sultry humidity of Tennessee summer hanging in the air, a small group dressed in white gathered on a Saturday morning, under shade trees at Freedmen’s Mission Historic Cemetery in Knoxville. The little patch of earth adjacent to Knoxville College, a historically Black liberal arts school, is dotted with weathered headstones. Prior to the pandemic, and since 2015, nearly 100 community members would have filled the small cemetery’s rolling terrain on this distinctive date—August 8. They would come for a special ceremony, one that feels particularly resonant in today’s…
