Back to the power poles.

We know four — three steel, one wooden — were punched into Vick Cemetery in 1997. Other than to respond to public records requests to say there are no records of the installation of these poles, the City has made no comment on this sacrilege. 

The desecration is not contained to Vick. From a pole at the edge of Vick’s parking lot, electrical lines swoop along the edge of Odd Fellows to a pole planted at the high point of Rountree Cemetery, a private, church-owned burial ground. 

We know that the City cleared Vick completely and placed a monument at its center the year before the power poles went in. We don’t know what condition Rountree was in in 1997, but it had been inactive for forty years or more and was likely seriously overgrown. Consider the photo below though. The City’s power pole is visible just left of top center. Twenty feet away, shown at the bottom of this image, is a cluster of concrete headstones. Most are broken — concrete was especially vulnerable to weather and the fire that was often used to clean graveyards — but ten year-old Buster Ellis‘ stands intact. The marker for his grandmother, Clarkie Atkinson Ellis, born enslaved, lies nearby. We have not identified the others. 

It is difficult to believe that this area was not cleared in preparation for the installation of the power pole and that this heap of markers — or Daniel and Lottie Marlow‘s standing tall just beyond them — was not visible. 

We demand an investigation into the circumstances that allowed the City of Wilson and/or Wilson Energy to install  power poles in African-American cemeteries.

The pole as seen from the eastern edge of Odd Fellows Cemetery. Its base is wrapped in wisteria vines.