Brad J Bennet and Chris Haley’s 40-minute film Unmarked is about how these memorials are yet another manifestation of history’s injustice. The documentary features the archivists, archaeologists, volunteers and descendants who are searching for and restoring African American cemeteries and burial sites like East End or Sweet Briar plantation. Their efforts are a reclamation of the histories that have been buried and neglected by a dominant society keener on commemorating the slavers instead of the enslaved.
“If you’re going to hold on so tight to these people who fought against freedom, we’re going to pick back up these people who you fought against,” Haley told the Guardian over a Zoom call alongside his Unmarked co-director Bennet.