cemetery desecration

Lane Street Project: are there graves UNDER the road?

About a year ago, I started but never published a post with the same title as this one: “are there graves UNDER the road?” However, I couldn’t get a handle what I thought about the possibilities, and I finally deleted the draft a couple of months ago.

I’ve written quite a bit about the development of what we now call Bishop L.N. Forbes Street, which started as a farm track and then became a narrow dirt road fitfully maintained. I’ll remind you that the stretch of road between Sandy Creek and the elbow at Lane Park was not paved until the late 1980s. A few years before the City finally laid asphalt, a jogger found bones in the ditch “about 10 feet from a grave that had been capped with concrete.” The Daily Times spoke Bill Bartlett in Public Works, who advised that about 1980, the City attempted to “define” the road and found, because of the numerous graves in the area,  it could only be widened sufficiently to allow a 40- to 45-foot — instead the usual 60-foot –right of way. A former county sanitation worker reported that he’d received a call from a woman who believed her relatives might be buried under Lane Street. Bartlett told the paper that the worker “was going to look into that for me. It could be that we need to find out who that could be and see if they want to do some digging out there to remove the remains.”

S0, in 1985, Public Works thought it was at least possible that graves lay under Lane Street/Bishop L.N. Forbes Street, and that was pretty much my answer when city officials posed the question to me in February: “It’s possible.”

Given that possibility, I hope the City’s contract with New South Associates for additional ground-penetrating radar includes the street as part of the right-of-way to be surveyed in Phase I of the Vick Cemetery Plan.

I recently stumbled upon a report New South’s Georgia office prepared after surveying a patch of neighborhood in unincorporated DeKalb County, just outside Atlanta. It’s a cautionary tale.

Deacon Fred Kinnemore of Saint Paul Baptist Church spent over 50 years advocating for an investigation into his claims that family members and ancestors were resting under Wilson Road. Saint Paul was established in 1919 on a dirt track in what was then a rural area a couple of miles west of the town of Tucker. After enduring years of harassment from more recently arrived white neighbors and finding an unexploded pipe bomb in their basement, the congregation moved to Nelms Drive in 1949. However, their cemetery remained at the original site. By the late 1960s, developers had paved over a section of the graveyard, and for decades after Deacon Kinnemore’s protests and exhortations were essentially howls into the void.

Finally, in February 2021, archaeologists from New South Associates identified numerous geophysical anomalies at the site. Trenches confirmed the presence of at least one grave among 26 probable graves — all in the street or its current right-of-way.

DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond acknowledged the deacon’s persistence and issued an official apology for the county’s role in the desecration of the African American cemetery.

I went to see Wilson Drive for myself this week.

The cemetery is completely fenced in and sits on a larger 120′ by 150′ parcel still owned by Saint Paul. Bizarrely, immediately behind the cemetery are three houses that appear to have been built in the 1970s. The houses can be accessed only by a driveway that crosses the church’s lot just beyond the west end of the cemetery.

Within the cemetery, two granite markers are immediately visible. The small pile of stones in front of the fence may also be remnants of grave markers.

The cemetery sits in a bowl between the street and the houses.

“Donated by Dea. Fred Kinnemore & Family.” The other large marker stands at the graves of two Kinnemores.

The area in which most of the grave anomalies were detected. DeKalb County right-of-way setbacks for interior local streets like Wilson Road are 27.5′ on each side of a center line. (As in Wilson County, of course, right-of-way setbacks are relatively recent requirements, long post-dating the establishment of cemeteries like Saint Paul and Vick.)

There was a flurry of media coverage about the discovery of Saint Paul’s graves in February 2021. At the time, Michael Thurmond vowed to go to court to seek permission to move the graves. I’m researching the follow-up.

Lane Street Project: see it for yourself.

Rather than the dialogue we have begged for, in September 2025 the City announced its choice to communicate about Vick via the passive, uni-directional, highly controlled medium of its website. Judging by its lax updating of info about prized projects like the baseball stadium — “what’s next? The buildings in the stadium footprint will be demolished soon.” — we knew where this was going. The City of Wilson is nothing if not predictable, and here we are.

One week and a day later, and silence still from the City of Wilson concerning what happened at Vick and Odd Fellows Cemeteries. No information, no explanation, no apology. From where I sit, the silence is an ineloquent “f**k you” to the cemeteries’ descendant communities and to anyone else who cares about what happens to these sacred spaces.

I’m finally in Wilson, and here’s what I saw yesterday afternoon.

 

Learn more about the Tate family plot here. Also, review this video from February 2020. From about 1:10-1:15, I’m walking past the high point of Odd Fellows at the Dawson and Tate plots. You can see a bit of one end of the exposed Tate wall at 1:12, then a section of the missing fourth side abutting the other end a couple of seconds later. That section is gone, scooped up and hauled away, I guess, and dumped wherever they dumped everything else they scraped away.

Here’s Vick Cemetery, post “flattening,” as Rebecca Agner put it.

 

 

And here, video from July 2023, when I walked the full front edge of Vick. The little orange-painted stobs I refer to above are visible in the first 3:30 minutes. You can see how far into the top surface of Vick the excavator cut to flatten the ditch bank.

And finally, is it another broken-up grave marker? Rip-rap? The City isn’t talking.

 

 

Videos by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2025.

Lane Street Project: the law.

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.

 

Lane Street Project: day 4, and we continue to await an explanation, an update, a plan.

Imagine you were a city council member in a certain mid-size eastern North Carolina city. Imagine learning one morning that in your district, a quarter-mile from your own front door, city-contracted excavators had scraped the ditch alongside two historic cemeteries, exposing and damaging headstones and concrete kerbing.

What would your public response be?

Tell me you would have one.

The city placed cones around the damaged marker late Friday morning. But look left. Is that another?

No? Neither you nor any of the other six council members, nor the city manager, nor the assistant city manager put in charge of the project?

No.

Photo courtesy of C. Facey.

Lane Street Project: two days later, an exposed grave marker and silence from the City.

As of this morning, this is the scene of the latest desecration of graves at Vick Cemetery. The site lies uncovered, exposed to the elements.

Do you hear something?

That’s the deafening silence from the City in the wake of this avoidable outrage. Beyond communication director Rebecca Agner’s terse comment to the Times, there has been no public statement of explanation, of apology, of anything. The absence of any public communication from the City, the failure to acknowledge the distress this incident has caused — all heighten the harm done. We demand  acknowledgment, transparency, accountability, a plan for repair, and a clear explanation of what will be done to prevent additional damage to Vick Cemetery.

Photos courtesy of T. Speight. Thank you!

Lane Street Project: yesterday, the City found a grave marker in the ditch bank at Vick Cemetery.

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.

——

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.