I am grateful to the Provincetown Independent for its coverage of the development of 27 Cemetery Road and the encroachment on the Roach-Watkins family gravesite. It is troublesome not just because of the lack of respect being shown to a family’s final resting place but also because it includes the grave of an American hero, someone who deserves to be honored but whose memorial monument will be overshadowed by a swimming pool.
Buried in the plot in question is Douglas Roach, a native son of Provincetown (whose name in some sources is spelled “Douglass”), born into a family who had been here for generations. From a very young age, he expressed deeply held political beliefs, a love for democracy, and a commitment to hard work, and he had natural leadership abilities. He graduated from Provincetown High School in 1928 and went on to study at the Massachusetts Agricultural College in Amherst (now UMass). He returned to Provincetown, where he was active in left-wing politics.
In 1937, he joined the Lincoln Battalion, better known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a group of Americans who volunteered to fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. While the United States was not officially involved in the conflict, this outfit is credited with being the first fully integrated American military unit, at times with Black men as commanders, and with Roach, a Black man, achieving the role of gun commander.
Prior to leaving for Spain, he was quoted as follows in the Provincetown Advocate: “I hope that the people of Provincetown will defend Americanism in this country as bravely as the Spanish people are defending their democratic rights: a government of their own choice, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of worship. I hope that we will not allow our American traditions of liberty and justice to be distorted by reactionaries who preach Americanism and practice the opposite.”
How relevant his words are right now.
Roach was wounded in the Battle of Brunete in July 1937. He returned to the United States to recuperate, but he died from his injuries in the summer of 1938 at age 29. Thousands attended his funeral in Harlem at the Mother AME Zion Church in a service led by the Rev. Benjamin Robeson (actor Paul Robeson’s brother), and hundreds more went to his service in Provincetown at the Church of the Pilgrims (which was next to Town Hall), followed by a graveside reading of a eulogy given by a fellow member of the Lincoln Brigade, an event documented on the PBS television show History Detectives. The gravestone eventually installed for Roach reads: “Who Died That Democracy May Live.”
As this story has unfolded, much has been discussed about probate courts, state law, and local bylaws and zoning regulations. That certainly has its place, but just because something is legal does not make it right. This is a matter of morality, an issue of right and wrong. What is happening is wrong. What is happening is a desecration.
Steve Desroches lives in Provincetown.
