A forgotten cemetery in a forest and a man's grave with a strange epitaph

One of the things we must understand when approaching history are certain expressions that seem strange and incomprehensible to us today.

Talbotton Forgotten Cemetery, an abandoned sacred place in a forest
An impressive funerary monument hidden in a lush forest in Scotland

Georgia is one of the US states where slavery was in force until the Civil War and was replaced by segregation, which lasted until the 1960s. Yesterday, the Youtube channel Sidestep: Adventures Into History showed an exploration of a forgotten cemetery in the middle of a forest, which houses the remains of an African-American family, the Reddings, in Webster County.

One of the graves, belonging to a man born in 1879 and who died in 1909, has an elaborate stone headstone and includes a curious epitaph: "A white man's friend." It is a phrase that the explorers cannot explain, and which takes us back to a very different time than today:

You can see some screenshots from this video here. We start with the gravestone I referred to earlier and its strange epitaph. It sounds like a derogatory expression, but it wasn’t at the time. From what I’ve been reading, that expression was used to refer to those African Americans who were friends with a white man who was, so to speak, their protector or benefactor. For that black person, it was a way of gaining more respect. That would also explain such a richly carved tombstone with a wrought iron fence around it, for a person who died at the age of 30 at a time when black people often lived in poverty.

Another grave, this time of a girl who died at the age of 19. Once again, it is a well-crafted tombstone that is well preserved, considering that it is from 1905.

Other tombstones in this cemetery are much simpler. They are on the ground and are gradually being covered by vegetation.

One of the tombstones is next to a fallen tree. It belongs to a person born in 1896 and died in 1943. There were burials in this cemetery until the 1960s.