Thirty years ago, the City of Wilson, via its council, city manager, and public works department, designed, approved, and implemented a plan to remove all standing headstones in Vick Cemetery and grade its surface. Those headstones were stored temporarily, then destroyed.
Here’s the law:
The City got away with this brazen and unlawful act and, recently, its representatives have deflected criticisms of the desecration of Vick with talk of good intentions, alleged community support for the plan, and let-bygones-be-bygones.
Last week, the City implemented another plan — whose details have not been made public — to address severe erosion of the drainage ditch that borders Vick. Contractors used excavators to “flatten” the top edge of the ditch bank. Though this area is in the modern public right of way, descendant testimony, limited ground-penetrating radar, and common sense attest that burials took place up to the edge of what was then an unpaved lane. Nonetheless, heavy machines cut into the surface of both Vick and Odd Fellows Cemeteries, exposing and damaging grave markers.
Let there be no ambiguity this time. Don’t let them — 30 years from now — shrug and say nobody said anything about the violence done to our dead. As descendants and kinfolk of men, women, and children buried in Vick and Odd Fellows Cemeteries, we decry the renewed abuse of these sacred spaces. We demand transparency and accountability concerning the decisions that led to this grievous error. We demand empathy, care and compassion. And, again, we demand a ground-penetrating radar survey of the public right of way at Vick Cemetery.
