Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta nearly all of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and work related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.
I’ve begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The ninth in a series — O’Neal African Methodist Episcopal Church Cemetery in Hampton, Georgia.
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During all the time I’ve been in Atlanta, I’ve never been to Atlanta Motor Speedway. Getting to O’Neal required that I skirt the racetrack’s hulking oval on an access road that dead-ended into Lower Woolsey Road. Flaggers controlled that intersection, the first glimpse of the massive construction project that has the cemetery in a chokehold. Traffic was being funneled through a single lane that crept past the site of what will be yet another enormous data center in Henry County.
After a half-mile or so, I spotted O’Neal A.M.E. just inside the tree edge. The church was founded during the early Reconstruction years by freedmen, but this building — or its shell, anyway — may date somewhat later. I’m not a student of African-American vernacular building practices, but it appears to be constructed primarily of a cement stucco over an irregular wall built from chunks of quartz and other fieldstone. There is also evidence of bricks used to form lintels over the windows and to outline a faux arch over the front entrance. Without doubt, O’Neal was built with the congregation’s collective labor, using materials ready to hand.
O’Neal A.M.E. Church, front elevation. A few charred bits of wood found in a rear addition to the main structure suggest a devastating fire.
Through the front window looking back toward the nave. There are no internal structures remaining.
The interior of the church.
The front portico, sealed with modern cinderblock.
Were the parallel lines visible at the top of this image made by a notched trowel?
A chunk of quartz encased in mortar in an exterior wall.
Across the road: what I came for. I scrambled up a five-foot embankment to gain the forest floor. Ahead of me, the remaining headstones of O’Neal church cemetery leaned and listed. The oldest marked grave dates to 1871; the last to the 1950s.
Most of the headstones I saw were professionally made and impressive. O’Neal clearly was a congregation with prosperous families.
Thomas A. Fortson’s monument.
“Prof. Thomas A. Fortson A.M. Ph.D. Was Born Jan. 1, 1854 And Died May 13, 1901. He Was Charitable.” Georgia native Fortson is listed as a teacher in the 1900 census of Nashville, Tennessee. He taught at Walden University, formerly known as Central Tennessee College, which housed Meharry Medical College.
Rows of head and foot stones.
Ceasar Fortson Mảr. 29, 1830 June 30, 1900 Gone, But Not Forgotten. Fortson appears in the 1900 census of nearby Woolsey district, Spalding County.
William G. Alexander. Aug. 11, 1902 May 17, 1909 A little time on earth he spent. Till God for him His angel sent. (In the background, you can just see the orange safety fencing separating O’Neal cemetery from the data center construction site, which wraps around it on three sides.)
A broken vault cover.
Y’all know I love a vernacular headstone. There’s a cross carved into the top section; then 1925 in the middle; then OLLIE, a pierced heart, BORN OCT. 3 1900, [illegible].
An ornamental wire fence outlining a family plot.
Fieldstone markers.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2026.
