In his 2018 speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, revolutionary leader Bob Avakian (BA) said that “…in the way this country has been built, and for the powers-that-be in this country, the humanity of Black people has never counted for anything—they have never been valued as human beings, but only as things to be exploited, oppressed, and repressed.” If you think what BA said about the humanity of Black people (and this applies to poor and oppressed people in general in this country) is an exaggeration, look no further than the outrage of secret graves recently uncovered in Mississippi.

It was revealed that since 2016, 215 bodies have been secretly buried in a “paupers’ graveyard” next to a prison farm behind the Hinds County Penal Colony near Jackson, capital of Mississippi. (A “pauper” is a dehumanizing term that means a very poor person.) Supposedly for bodies that were unclaimed or unidentified, each grave is marked only by a metal pole with a number attached. In fact, the 215 bodies were all identified! Yet none of the families of these victims have ever been notified that their loved ones are dead, or where they are buried. 

On December 18, NBC News published the names, ages, gender, and race along with the date of burial of each of those 215 individuals. According to the list, those buried included people of Black, white, Latino, and unknown nationality. This information had been kept hidden by the coroner's office and has only now been brought to light through a public records request. There are 672 bodies in total buried at this location, and the identities of most have not yet been made public.

“They had me looking for him all that time, and they knew who he was” 

Bettersten Wade's 37-year-old son Dexter left home with a friend March 5, 2023, but didn't return. She filed a missing person report and continued contacting the authorities for months about his disappearance but got no reply. It was not until five months later that an investigator came to her home to tell her that Dexter was dead. According to the official story, just an hour after leaving home Dexter was hit by a police car driven by an off-duty cop. The authorities claim they have been unable to reach her—despite finding her son’s wallet in his pocket with his ID and her address. Dexter's body was buried behind the jail with the number 672 stuck to the pole.

Once she was able to find the burial plot, Bettersten Wade was told she had to pay the county $250 to retrieve her son's body, now considered the property of the state! She and her lawyer asked to be present when the body was exhumed, but she was even deprived of that dignity. When they arrived at the gravesite, Dexter's remains—which had neither been embalmed nor put in a casket, just stuck in a bag to rapidly decompose in a shallow grave—had already been dug up. In addition to this moral outrage, the lawyer pointed out that this “broke the chain of custody” necessary to determine the actual cause of Dexter's death. 

According to an independent autopsy later conducted at the family's request, Dexter Wade's body, which was in an advanced state of decomposition, showed multiple blunt force injuries to the skull, ribs, and pelvis; his left leg was amputated. His body was completely run over by the police vehicle. Burying the body without notifying the family would make it unlikely the official finding of “accidental death” could later be questioned. 

The coroner's claim that they could not reach Bettersten Wade to notify her about her son is complete bullshit. Besides the fact that they had her address from day one, four years earlier Jackson pigs had stopped Bettersten’s brother, pulled him out of his car, and slammed him to the ground, causing his death. She waged a relentless public battle to have the pigs responsible prosecuted, and one of them was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison. And now Bettersten Wade is the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Jackson Police Department. 

More Families Step Forward

The families of two other men—40-year-old Marrio Moore and 39-year-old Jonathan David Hankins—also learned that their loved ones had been secretly buried in the same graveyard. At a press conference December 20, the mothers, aunts and sisters of the three men spoke of the ongoing nightmare they had been put through. 

“I didn’t know it for a year and seven months. It’s like they just threw him out like trash, just like they did with the others,” said Gretchen Hankins, the mother of Jonathan Hankins, who is white. Her son was found dead in a Jackson hotel room May 23, 2022. She reported him missing in July, but she only learned what happened to Jonathan this past December when NBC News reporters met with her to share what they had learned through their investigation. 

Marrio Moore, a Black man, was found beaten to death in February 2023, wrapped in a tarp and left on the street. Like the others, his remains were buried at the same grave site a few months later. His mother, Mary Moore-Glenn, said, "They just got him and (threw) him in a hole, like he wasn't nobody; like he wasn't important.” 

As word about the Jackson “paupers’ grave” is spreading around the country, more family members searching for their loved ones are coming forward. 

For those who ask why we revcoms (revolutionary communists) say this system of capitalism-imperialism we live under is utterly criminal and does not deserve to go on for one more day, this story provides just one of the all too many answers to that question.