Wilson Times posted this article to its Facebook page a few days ago, and the furor was immediate. The condition of Hamilton Burial Garden is tragic, and, given my Lane Street Project work, I understand the pain and bewilderment family members are experiencing. I also feel deeply for the cemetery’s nominal new owner, LaMonique Hamilton, who is saddled ad infinitum with a financial burden she neither created nor sought.

In the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, when citizens were demanding that the city meet its obligations to public Vick Cemetery, opponents snapped, “Why didn’t families take better care of their loved ones? Why did they let the cemetery go?” This was ludicrous criticism in the context of a city-owned cemetery left out of the revenue stream to which African-Americans paid fees and contributed tax dollars year in, year out. This article illustrates how this response is equally useless in the context of private cemeteries. Hamilton Burial Garden today is Rountree and Odd Fellows Cemeteries 75 years ago. With the meager income from past burials long gone, few new burials, relatives scattered across the country, and owners who have either died out or are too aged or infirm to do the work themselves, the grass grows ever higher, the vines thicker, the trees taller. A single Southern summer is enough to obliterate a lawn, and no single family can stop the slide.

The issue is not unique to African-American cemeteries. Google “are perpetual care cemeteries forever” for some truly depressing reading. As shocking and painful as the realization is, the $500 or $1000 or $5000 paid for a plot ten or twenty or forty years ago cannot cover cemetery upkeep as long will be necessary. (Contrary to the article, Hamilton Burial Garden was founded around 1981, when Lamont Hamilton purchased the property. Newspaper obituaries show burials as early as February 1982.)

LaMonique Hamilton has forthrightly laid out Hamilton Burial Garden’s realities. She is seeking your ideas about how to address ongoing needs for care. How can the community help prevent another Odd Fellows?

Wilson Times, 29 July 2025.