JasoRockStar
Superstar
Black cemeteries are bulldozed and vandalized. Descendants are cleaning up alone.
Once, when Raphael Morris was 10 years old, he and his father drove through Hillsdale, Missouri, just a few miles from their hometown, Pagedale, and stopped in front of Greenwood Cemetery. “You have family in there,” his father told him. As a child, Morris said, he didn’t think much of the news and didn’t think twice about the cemetery.
Until more than 50 years later.
Morris found himself back at the burial grounds in 2016 after seeing a news program about what poor condition the land was in. So, he traveled just 15 minutes from his home in Olivette to the cemetery to see for himself.
“It was absolutely nothing but a forest. You couldn’t see a single headstone on the property,” said Morris, now 69. By then, he said, Greenwood was mostly riddled with discarded mattresses, television sets, furniture and other garbage dumped there over the years.
With that, Morris retired from his job at a chemical company and devoted himself to restoring the cemetery. He, a historian, Etta Daniels, and a group of concerned citizens founded the Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association. Morris said at least a dozen of his family members are buried there. But through the growth, debris and garbage, he has only been able to find headstones for an uncle and a great-grandmother.
Greenwood Cemetery was founded in 1874 as the first Black commercial burial ground for the St. Louis area’s growing Black population after the Civil War. At least 50,000 people were buried in Greenwood, including Harriett Scott who, along with her husband, Dred Scott, sued for their freedom in the historic Supreme Court case, Dred Scott v. Sandford; Charlton Hunt Tandy, a Civil War veteran and lawyer who helped free enslaved families; and Lucy Delaney, who wrote the famed 1890s slave narrative, “From the Darkness Cometh the Light.”
Greenwood was maintained by members of the founding family well into the late 1970s before it was sold and underwent “severe neglect, abuse and vandalism,” according to the association. A group of locals formed the Friends of Greenwood in 1999 to preserve the cemetery. But, in the years that followed, many had grown too old to care for the land and it fell into disrepair once more.
Overgrown fields and woods — and vandals — have since damaged grave markers. In some areas, severe erosion has exposed human bones.
Since the Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association was formed, the group has cleared out about half the cemetery and located several documents to identify those buried. So far, they’ve found some form of record for at least 35,000 people.
“As far as record-keeping, when we first started in 1999, we had nothing. Today, you could give me a name and I can go to the digital records and say, ‘Yes, this person is there,’” Daniels said. “For some of these souls, the only record of their existence may be Greenwood Cemetery records.”
The Greenwood association is one of many groups across the country working to restore, preserve and honor centuries-old historically Black burial sites. For the descendants, students and simply concerned citizens advocating for cemeteries in cities across the U.S., the neglect of Black burial grounds is an extension of the racism Black people experience while living. In states like Georgia, Missouri and North Carolina, volunteers are working to clean cemeteries and restore headstones; advocates in Virginia and Louisiana are battling developers to keep Black cemeteries intact; and groups in Texas and Florida are seeking justice for Black burial grounds that were paved over to build properties and highways. The fight for Black cemeteries is being fought on several fronts in a growing movement urging the nation to value and honor Black life and death.
The movement to preserve Black cemeteries is inherently tied to the predatory land practices of the Jim Crow era, said Kami Fletcher, an associate professor of history at Albright College and president of the Collective for Radical Death Studies. Black towns and cemeteries were disturbed or destroyed for industrial and infrastructure developments.
“When you look at land ownership in this country, it is absolutely at the intersection of patriarchy, whiteness, racism and Jim Crow — really nefarious ways in which those developers ended up getting land,” said Fletcher, the author of “Real Business: Maryland’s First Black Cemetery Journey’s Into the Enterprise of Death, 1807-1920.”
“Jim Crow allowed Black cemeteries to go unkempt, and city dollars flowed to white cemeteries. There’s a lot more to be said about how whites were just allowed to dislocate Black folks and trample all over Black cemeteries,” Fletcher said.
Although some cities across the country have — to varying degrees — supported the growing preservation movement, federal legislation has been slow to come. In 2020 the Senate passed a version of the African American Burial Grounds Network Act, which would create a database of historic Black burial grounds, help to preserve the sites, and provide grants for research, all under the National Park Service. Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., introduced the bill in 2019 in the House, where it has remained.
Once, when Raphael Morris was 10 years old, he and his father drove through Hillsdale, Missouri, just a few miles from their hometown, Pagedale, and stopped in front of Greenwood Cemetery. “You have family in there,” his father told him. As a child, Morris said, he didn’t think much of the news and didn’t think twice about the cemetery.
Until more than 50 years later.
Morris found himself back at the burial grounds in 2016 after seeing a news program about what poor condition the land was in. So, he traveled just 15 minutes from his home in Olivette to the cemetery to see for himself.
“It was absolutely nothing but a forest. You couldn’t see a single headstone on the property,” said Morris, now 69. By then, he said, Greenwood was mostly riddled with discarded mattresses, television sets, furniture and other garbage dumped there over the years.
With that, Morris retired from his job at a chemical company and devoted himself to restoring the cemetery. He, a historian, Etta Daniels, and a group of concerned citizens founded the Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association. Morris said at least a dozen of his family members are buried there. But through the growth, debris and garbage, he has only been able to find headstones for an uncle and a great-grandmother.
Greenwood Cemetery was founded in 1874 as the first Black commercial burial ground for the St. Louis area’s growing Black population after the Civil War. At least 50,000 people were buried in Greenwood, including Harriett Scott who, along with her husband, Dred Scott, sued for their freedom in the historic Supreme Court case, Dred Scott v. Sandford; Charlton Hunt Tandy, a Civil War veteran and lawyer who helped free enslaved families; and Lucy Delaney, who wrote the famed 1890s slave narrative, “From the Darkness Cometh the Light.”
Greenwood was maintained by members of the founding family well into the late 1970s before it was sold and underwent “severe neglect, abuse and vandalism,” according to the association. A group of locals formed the Friends of Greenwood in 1999 to preserve the cemetery. But, in the years that followed, many had grown too old to care for the land and it fell into disrepair once more.
Overgrown fields and woods — and vandals — have since damaged grave markers. In some areas, severe erosion has exposed human bones.
Since the Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association was formed, the group has cleared out about half the cemetery and located several documents to identify those buried. So far, they’ve found some form of record for at least 35,000 people.
“As far as record-keeping, when we first started in 1999, we had nothing. Today, you could give me a name and I can go to the digital records and say, ‘Yes, this person is there,’” Daniels said. “For some of these souls, the only record of their existence may be Greenwood Cemetery records.”
The Greenwood association is one of many groups across the country working to restore, preserve and honor centuries-old historically Black burial sites. For the descendants, students and simply concerned citizens advocating for cemeteries in cities across the U.S., the neglect of Black burial grounds is an extension of the racism Black people experience while living. In states like Georgia, Missouri and North Carolina, volunteers are working to clean cemeteries and restore headstones; advocates in Virginia and Louisiana are battling developers to keep Black cemeteries intact; and groups in Texas and Florida are seeking justice for Black burial grounds that were paved over to build properties and highways. The fight for Black cemeteries is being fought on several fronts in a growing movement urging the nation to value and honor Black life and death.
The movement to preserve Black cemeteries is inherently tied to the predatory land practices of the Jim Crow era, said Kami Fletcher, an associate professor of history at Albright College and president of the Collective for Radical Death Studies. Black towns and cemeteries were disturbed or destroyed for industrial and infrastructure developments.
“When you look at land ownership in this country, it is absolutely at the intersection of patriarchy, whiteness, racism and Jim Crow — really nefarious ways in which those developers ended up getting land,” said Fletcher, the author of “Real Business: Maryland’s First Black Cemetery Journey’s Into the Enterprise of Death, 1807-1920.”
“Jim Crow allowed Black cemeteries to go unkempt, and city dollars flowed to white cemeteries. There’s a lot more to be said about how whites were just allowed to dislocate Black folks and trample all over Black cemeteries,” Fletcher said.
Although some cities across the country have — to varying degrees — supported the growing preservation movement, federal legislation has been slow to come. In 2020 the Senate passed a version of the African American Burial Grounds Network Act, which would create a database of historic Black burial grounds, help to preserve the sites, and provide grants for research, all under the National Park Service. Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., introduced the bill in 2019 in the House, where it has remained.