Yesterday morning, city contractors scraping the ditch bank alongside Vick Cemetery uncovered — and broke — a marble grave marker.

This terrible development is shocking, but hardly surprising. We’ve been screaming to anyone who will listen that there are graves in the public right-of-way.

First, the Wilson Times‘ coverage (which includes my inarticulate comments — I was so wound up). Then my less temperate thoughts about what is happening.

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Tuesday afternoon, I got a text:

Was the City working on the drainage issue? Last I heard, they were just exploring a plan. Nobody seemed to know.

Then yesterday morning, I got a call from Mayor Carlton Stevens — thank you! — who explained what had happened and assured me that work had stopped until further guidance from New South Associates. I asked for photos of the broken stone, and he obliged by returning to the site to show me via FaceTime.

Let me back up for a moment.

On 2 September 2025, I sent a letter to mayor, city manager, and council that requested, among other things:

On 25 September 2025, I posted the City’s newly revealed plans for spending the $50,000 allotted by the General Assembly for capital expenditures at Vick Cemetery. The City’s bullet point is in blue. My response (which largely tracks my communication to mayor and council) is in red. In black, further commentary.

In summary: (1) please don’t — yet again — rely solely on tools from the public works box to address the erosion problems and (2) WE NEED TO SURVEY THE PUBLIC RIGHT-OF-WAY.

I have no idea what the plan was when work started on Bishop L.N. Forbes Street Tuesday. But I know what it was not — either of the above. Apparently, contractors were “flattening the surface … in advance of stormwater work,” i.e. scraping the ditch bank not only alongside Vick Cemetery, but Odd Fellows as well. The discovery of a marble slab tilting out of the soil stopped the work, but what about this?

This is the ditch alongside Odd Fellows, and that is the broken end of the low concrete wall that once enclosed the Tate and Dawson family plots. It was exposed by the “flattening” that someone decided was a great way to stop the encroachment into and undercutting of the edge of these cemeteries by open drainage ditches.

Here, in 2025, the City of Wilson’s hubris is leading it to make the same mistakes that resulted in the removal of headstones and grading and resurfacing of Vick Cemetery circa 1995; the paving over of graves to create a parking pad in the late 1990s; the installation of power poles in Vick and Rountree Cemeteries in 1997; the destruction of headstones in City storage in the early 2000s; and the alleged damage to graves in Odd Fellows by heavy equipment while repairing a high-voltage line, also in the early 2000s (I haven’t even talked about that.)

Where does it stop? When will they listen?

There’s a City Council meeting tonight, folks. The three new council members will be installed and a mayor pro tem will be elected. After the reports, there will be a call for audience comments. I can’t be there, but I hope you can. Ask them what fresh hell they are putting our ancestors through. Tell them how you feel about the continued rough handling of our people’s graves. If these are not your people, speak out anyway. Practice radical empathy. Express your outrage. Demand better.