cemetery preservation

Lane Street Project: S6 D1 is in the books!

An enthusiastic thank you to the crew that opened Season 6 of Lane Street Project’s cemetery cleanups yesterday! Workday 1 is in the books!

On a warm, overcast morning, volunteers focused on cutting and clearing wisteria sprouts that sprang up inside the tree line in the off-season. This is critical to prepare for future work at Odd Fellows. Special thanks to newly elected District 6 council member Eduardo Herrera-Picasso, who looked, listened, and learned — and got to work with a string trimmer!

The next volunteer opportunity comes on Martin Luther King Jr. holiday — Monday, January 19! There’s work for everyone, of every ability, and we welcome all!

WE CARE!

Installation by Jen Kehrer. Photo courtesy of Olivia Neeley.

Hamilton Burial Garden in peril.

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.

Lane Street Project: Owl Rock Methodist Church Cemetery.

Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta for most of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and works related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.

I’ve recently begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The third in a series — Owl Rock Cemetery, South Fulton, Fulton County.

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Founded in 1828, Owl Rock Methodist Church stands near the intersection of Campbellton Road and Union Road in southwest Fulton County, an area that saw significant skirmishing during the Civil War’s Battle of Atlanta. The church’s cemetery lies adjacent to the church alongside Union Road and contains two grave markers designating buried African Americans. All were or had been enslaved, but only one is named — Hasseltine Bell.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson.

Lane Street Project: Oakland Cemetery.

Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta for most of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and works related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.

I’ve recently begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The first in a series — Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Fulton County.

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I’ve lived in Atlanta more than half my life, but only recently ventured into the city’s storied Oakland Cemetery. The cemetery’s “Black Section,” founded in 1866, covers 3.5 acres and more than 12,000 known burials. (That’s less than half the size of Vick Cemetery, but three times the graves.) The grounds are now the focus of extensive restoration efforts by Historic Oakland Foundation.

In 2021 or ’22, Wilson city council voted to fund interpretive signage at Vick Cemetery, but never moved forward. Signboards like this one would help the community connect history and family to the present seemingly empty field that is Vick.

This audio cell phone tour is fantastic and is on my wildest dream list for Lane Street Project.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2025.