The Strange Story Of Essie Dunbar, The Woman Who Was Allegedly Buried Alive In 1915

The specific conditions of this system are relevant to the Essie Dunbar story in multiple ways.

First, they help explain why there is no contemporaneous newspaper documentation.

Black lives in the rural South in 1915 were not, by and large, covered by the white-owned newspapers that dominated the regional press.

Events in Black communities — births, deaths, weddings, church services, community gatherings — went largely unrecorded in the formal press unless they intersected with the concerns of white society.

A Black woman apparently waking up in her coffin during her funeral might seem like the kind of event that would generate coverage, but if the participants were Black and the event occurred in a primarily Black community with no white witnesses, it might easily have passed without notice in the Augusta or Columbia or Charleston newspapers.