Saniyah Pullen, Contributing Writer
Across Richmond, volunteer organizations work to preserve and restore cemeteries. Many of the members of these restoration groups are descendants of the people buried in these cemeteries.
A number of Richmond cemeteries, especially African American cemeteries established during segregation, have been neglected and vandalized for decades.
Ryan Smith, a VCU history professor, has been teaching classes on the subject for 17 years.
Smith has worked closely with Richmond’s restoration groups, creating a website for information on Richmond cemeteries, and wrote the book “Death and Rebirth in a Southern City: Richmond’s Historic Cemeteries.”
“Objects and buildings and landscapes are critical historical sources,” Smith said.
The preservation of cemeteries is vital because they serve as historical records that reveal information about religion, race, gender, class and evolution of communities, according to Smith.
“If we learn about the past through the landscape around us, the condition they’re in really matters,” Smith said. “We’re losing essential historical information.”
Cemetery restoration groups not only impact the descendants of those buried in the cemeteries, but Richmond’s community as a whole, Smith said.
“The cemeteries became rallying points to create a new view of the city’s past in a way that was very one-sided before that time,” Smith said.
Friends of Maury and Mt. Olivet Cemeteries
Kat Sharp and Bronwyn Hughes co-founded the Friends of Maury and Mt. Olivet Cemeteries in June of this year.
Friends of Maury Cemetery was established in 1874 and included burial sections for Black and white residents. The Black section of the article was renamed Mt. Olivet in 1910.
Friends of Maury and Mt. Olivet work to make the cemetery a more welcoming space and preserve the history of the site.
“They’re portals into communities and different periods of history,” Sharp said.
Sharp and Hughes refer to cemetery restorators as “cemetery citizens.” People all have different reasons, but share a common goal of preserving history.
“It brings together a group of people that you wouldn’t necessarily think have a common goal,” Sharp said.
Friends of East End and Evergreen
Brian Palmer, a founding member of the Friends of East End, said he found the cemeteries in dire need of restoration.
Palmer had done research into African American cemeteries, looking for his great grandparents who were enslaved in Virginia and buried at a cemetery near Williamsburg.
East End is an established private cemetery founded in 1897. Evergreen Cemetery was founded in 1891.
“When you’re researching Black people born before 1865, there’s not much to go on,” Palmer said. “We were going to cemeteries in order to piece together the history of my family and their communities.”
The clearing of East End took about nine years, according to Palmer. Evergreen began later, and when working on the cemetery during the evening, the group found a number of uncovered African American headstones belonging to individuals as early as 1827.
“The fundamental thing you’re doing is creating access for relatives, scholars and visitors to see these headstones,” Palmer said.
Whether a cemetery is privately owned, city owned or funded by the state, preservation work is essential, Palmer said.
“It takes many hands to do this work, just as it took a few hands to destroy the work of the original founders,” Palmer said. “It takes a lot of work but it’s essential. You can’t understand this country without understanding who these people were.”