Standing on a small strip of green on one side of a busy highway in Bethesda, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo gestured across the street to scaffolding and a McDonald’s taking up the bulk of an empty lot.

Underneath, she said, are the bones of hundreds of Black men, women and children — enslaved people and their descendants who had been buried, and forgotten, at what was once Moses Macedonia African Cemetery.

“There are no markers or history trails that acknowledge their existence,” said Coleman-Adebayo, the president of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition. “Only McDonald’s, Whole Foods, dry cleaners and a strip mall.”

The coalition has for years been at the center of a bitter battle with county officials over the planned redevelopment of the lot, slated to become a multi-level self-storage facility. Advocates say the construction would further desecrate a historic burial ground, originally paved over when developers pushed Black families out of the River Road community in the 1960s.

County authorities have pushed back in public and in court, questioning the validity of the coalition’s claims and arguing that there are no longer human remains buried underneath the lot. Officials have also said they lack authority to stop the redevelopment of the land, which the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission sold in 2017.

The legal battle has made its way to the Maryland Supreme Court and is now being relitigated in lower courts. The coalition plans to take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if they have to.

“This is a David and Goliath fight, but we know who won that battle at the end of the day,” Coleman-Adebayo said. “A victory on River Road will prevent the atrocity and genocide that happened in this community from ever happening again.”

In the meantime, advocates are continuing the public campaign to save the cemetery — including, and especially, on Juneteenth. To celebrate the holiday, which marks the day in 1865 when the last groups of enslaved people in Texas were told they were freed, the coalition hosted a small rally near the lot.

About 100 people attended the demonstration, cheering as advocates hung a sign over the highway calling for the preservation of the cemetery. They sang together: “We’re gonna make good trouble today. We’re gonna make good trouble today here at Moses.” And they chanted: “Desecration is genocide.”

“We remember on Juneteenth that enslaved people freed themselves,” said Rosie Saah, an invited speaker with the Palestinian Solidarity Network. “They continually resisted. So we must continue to resist and uphold the dignity of all in life and in death.”

The event was both an acknowledgement of Juneteenth and a call to action. The coalition is asking Bethesda residents to boycott and picket outside of Montgomery County’s planned Juneteenth celebration on Saturday, as they have in past years.

The gathering also featured tables operated by local vendors, who offered food, informational cards and books to attendees. At one table, two teachers showed off a class project completed by fourth graders at The Siena School, a private school for students with dyslexia in Silver Spring. The children learned about the cemetery in class and made drawings and sculptures of possible museums or memorials to commemorate the site.

The students also wrote a letter to the Housing Opportunities Commission, which was on display. It read, in part: “Everyone deserves a good resting place. Enslaved people worked so hard. They worked hard to be free and build a new town.”

“If kids as young as 9 and 10 years old can tell that desecration is wrong, why can’t the adults in charge?” said Robert Stubberfield, a member of the coalition and the emcee of the event.

Stubberfield pushed the crowd to speak out against injustice and remember the importance of liberation. With everyone’s help, he said, the coalition would show that “Black lives matter in life and in death, from the womb to the tomb, from the cradle to the grave.”