I've been reading a lot about African American gravestones lately. Here's an epitaph mentioned by Angelika Kruger-Kahloula in her article, "Tributes in Stone and Lapidary Lapses: Commemorating Black People in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century America" (Markers, 1989):
In memory of
CAESAR
Here lies the best of slaves
Now turning into dust:
Caesar the Ethiopian craves
A place among the just.
His faithful soul has fled
To realms of heavenly light,
And by the blood that Jesus shed
is changed from Black to White.
Jan 15 he quitted the stage
in the 77th year of his age.
1780
North Attleborough, MA
picture available here
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