The next day is what they crave. When everybody wakes and in that first long breath of remembering waits just long enough to realize there’s one less miracle left in the hopper for them, now that the angels stopped to listen and passed on.

Photographs taken by QAW at the site of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia and nearby at the midwives’ burial section of the Lynchburg Old City Cemetery. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the town of Lynchburg was founded by a family of planters named Lynch—the terms “lynching,” “lynch law,” and “lynch mob” all derive from their name and legacy. The Lynchburg Old City Cemetery was founded in 1806 and is the burial site for more than 15,000 people of African descent, both enslaved and free. Three quarters of those buried are women, children, and stillborn babies. From 1806 until 1895, the City Cemetery was the only burial ground open to African Americans in the area.