Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Lives of the Past Informing the Future | Page 7

sweet auburn | 2019 volume ii
For Simmons, “Harriet Jacobs’s first
person narrative being read and re-read and
shared again and again is a chance to re-
write and re/right history,” a corrective to the
traditional historical narratives that tended
to be one-sided. Few such narratives are told
from the African American perspective from
that period in history, making it easy for us to
misunderstand what life might have been like
for black women at that time. As Simmons
puts it, “when you get the opportunity to
actually read a first-person testimony, it is
very exciting.”
Simmons adds, “It is easy to be horrified
by what we think black lives might have been
like or even to romanticize their lives in some
way, but truthfully these are just present-
day ideas of life that we are applying to the
past when we don’t have first-hand accounts
to consider. Women endured hardships in
the past, but they also laughed and loved,
raised children, got married, got things
accomplished even during the very hardest
points of their lives.” She recalls the African
proverb: “Until the lion tells the story, the
hunter will always be the hero.”
In Mount Auburn, Simmons has found a
place to discover a myriad of voices from the
past. With more than 100,000 people buried
or memorialized at the Cemetery, there are
countless voices to learn from going forward.
“Mount Auburn Cemetery holds history in its
hands,” says Simmons. “It is a place where
my interest in women’s history and African
American history and LBGT history all
dovetail together.”
On September 29, 2013, Simmons, then
Vice Mayor of Cambridge, presided over the
dedication of a monument to nineteenth-
century cyclist Katherine “Kittie” T. Knox
(1874–1900), who is buried in a previously
unmarked grave on Vesper Path (photos to
left). In her day, Knox challenged perceptions
of both race and gender in the cycling
community and in society at large by riding
an upright “men’s” bicycle and wearing self-
tailored pants.
Nevertheless, Simmons notes that many
remarkable women—like Knox, Jacobs, Lewis,
and Mary Walker (1818–1873, Lot 4312 Kalmia
Path, who also escaped slavery and whose
monument is pictured on page 4)—probably
did not think of themselves as trailblazers, but
rather just as women, human beings trying to
live their lives with the same rights that were
given freely to others in their society.
“It behooves all of us to learn about other
people’s stories and struggles,” says Simmons,
“and every time we feel tired or weary with
our lives today, to turn the page back and to
remember those who have gone before us,
those who made hard sacrifices (not always
of their own choosing) and thereby made
our lives more comfortable today, and whose
shoulders we all stand on.”
Denise is delighted that the Cambridge
City Council recently voted to rename
two streets in honor of prominent African
American women with ties to Mount Auburn:
North Street will be changed to Jacobs Street
to honor Harriet Jacobs; and North Point
Boulevard will be renamed Morgan Avenue
to honor Gertrude Wright Morgan. Morgan
was involved in the Niagara Movement and
the establishment of the NAACP and is
buried with her husband, Clement, in Lot
7503 Mound Avenue at Mount Auburn. In
addition to these two streets, Simmons
notes, “the Kittie Knox Bike Path is going to
make a wonderful connection between East
Cambridge and River Street!”
Many people see cemeteries as places of
death, but Simmons says she sees them as
“places of life”: “if we all thought of death as a
part of life instead of as the final frontier, then
we might not be so traumatized by it. Not one
of us is getting out of here alive, so we must
embrace that, and prepare ourselves for it!”
Simmons suggests writing your own
obituary: “Too many women and LGBT
people have had their lives sanitized by others,
including their families after their death.” As
part of her own preparation for the future,
she has drafted a epitaph for herself: “Let the
work that I have done speak for me.”
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