From the Dallas Daily Times Herald
Aug 24, 1889 edition
A NEGRO CUSTOM
Putting Playthings and Medicine Bottles
on the Graves of Children.

While strolling last Sunday, a little way outside the city limits, near the head of Eighteenth street, I noticed two carriages filled with colored people entering an enclosure.  I saw that it was a cemetery and followed.  A stalwart negro took from one of the carriages, a small coffin, and with the ceremony of a short prayer, it was deposited in the earth.  Six or eight friends of the dead babe stood with tearful eyes during the few minutes occupied in filling the little grave; then they re-entered the carriages and drove away.  Just before leaving, a woman, whom I judged to be the bereaved mother, laid upon the mound, two or three infants' toys.

Looking among the large number of graves of children, I observed this practice to be very general.  Some were literally covered with playthings.  There were nursing bottles, rattle boxes, tin horses and wagons, "Noah's ark," sets of dishes, marbles, tops, china cups and saucers, slates, picture books in endless number and variety.  Many of them had apparently lain there for years, articles of a perishable nature having been almost destroyed by sun and storm.  There were very few children's graves which did not have something of this kind upon them.  On many of the larger graves were pretty vases, statuettes and other articles suitable to more adult years.

Upon inquiry, I was told that this custom is almost universal among the colored people in the south.  The sentiment that prompts it readily suggests itself, but it is not quite so easy to understand another feature which I noticed.  Upon fully half the small graves, lying or standing, partly buried in the earth, were medicine bottles of every size and shape.  Some were nearly full and all contained more or less of the medicine which had no doubt been used in the effort to ward off the visit of death.  The usual number of these on each grave was from one to three, but on one I counted eight.  The placing of these bottles is certainly a singular conceit and would seem to border on superstition.  Just why they do it, is not clear.  I was impelled by curiosity to inquire of two or three negroes about it, but they seemed no better able to explain it than I was.  One old woman, who was loitering about the cemetery, said in answer to my question:

"I kain't tell ye why, mister, but dey allers does it.  When I was a chile I libed down in ole Virginny, an' it was jes' de same dar.  I d'no, but mebbe dey t'inks de medisan 'll he'p de chil'en after deys buried, but I don't see no good in it nohow."

This is the nearest approach to an opinion I was able to get.  I was inclined to coincide in it, such as it was.  -- Washington Correspondent, Cleveland Leader.