ground-penetrating radar

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: 4,224.

Jen Kehrer is an early and avid supporter of Lane Street Project, and we love her for it. The past couple of years, a new job has taken her outside Wilson County, but she came back today to deliver a message. 

Kehrer installed fence stitching bold enough to see from the road. 4,224. The number of grave anomalies detected in Vick Cemetery with ground-penetrating radar. The number — the minimum number — of ancestors who lie beneath this featureless sod. We remember Vick’s dead.

Thank you, Jen Kehrer! Your allyship is deeply appreciated.

(Also, Day 18.)

Photos courtesy of J. Kehrer, December 2025.

Lane Street Project: Wilmington’s Maides Cemetery.

Goals.

Historic Wilmington Foundation is partnering with a community advocate Kathy King to preserve and protect Wilmington’s historic African-American Maides Cemetery. University of North Carolina-Wilmington joined in to conduct ground-penetrating radar to help determine the cemetery’s limits as well find out more about those interred there.

Historic Wilmington’s website links an enviable storymap that reveals the cemetery’s history in detail.

Thanks to Jane Cooke Hawthorne for the tip!

Bravo, Iredell County Public Library!

Kudos to the Statesville, N.C., chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. for recognizing (and partnering with) Shellie Taylor, Joel Reese, and Iredell County Public Library for their exemplary work with Statesville’s Green Street Cemetery project. Further congrats to the library on its invitation to speak at the North Carolina Humanities Luncheon about library projects funded by N.C. Humanities, including the ground-penetrating radar at Green Street Cemetery! (There’s an idea!)

Lane Street Project: resetting and repainting.

In June 2023, New South Associates returned to Vick Cemetery to mark graves straddling two property lines with small painted wooden blocks. Though no one who’s been paying attention was surprised that graves lie astride and outside the cemetery’s modern boundaries, the little orange markers were nonetheless shocking visual proof that we still don’t know how many people lie in this public burial ground.

As we observed just a few days ago, since N.S.A. reported on their work in August, Wilson City Council spared even a glance at Vick.

Yesterday, R. Briggs Sherwood and Castonoble Hooks of Lane Street Project’s Senior Force worked in Vick Cemetery to repaint and reset faded and dislodged blocks. Thank you! The blocks were not intended to be permanent markers and inevitably have been jostled by the Cemetery Commission’s crew that regularly tends the grounds. (They are the ones who sprayed defoliant in small circles around each block to keep weeds from overrunning them.)

Cass, Briggs, and the Lane Street Project faithful have not forgotten the 4,224 who lie here. Have you?

Photos courtesy of Castonoble Hooks.

Lane Street Project: “linear anomalies.”

The power poles are not the only utilities in Vick Cemetery.

New South Associates’ GPR report revealed three “linear anomalies” that they interpreted as utility lines. Two of them appear to postdate the 1994 grading of the cemetery and disturbed multiple graves during construction. What in the world are they?

Utility Lines 1 and 2 are marked below. (New South believes Line 3, the pink T-shape off the green path, dates to the period the cemetery was active. It does not cross graves.)

Per Wilson County GIS information, “soil and water drainage tiles” run under the southwest quadrant of Vick Cemetery. It is not clear if this is what GPR detected. It would seem an odd location for drainage infrastructure as this is a relatively high, flat section of the site. If they are drainage lines, who placed them and when? I’ll seek more information from Wilson County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Lane Street Project: New South’s updated recommendations.

The final report New South Associates submitted to the City on August 14 contained augmented recommendations. (The originals may be seen here.) The most notable change is the addition of a recommendation that the City develop a comprehensive cemetery management plan. My thoughts in red.

Lane Street Project: the border markers.

Here’s the graphic I requested last week. New South Associates displayed it in its PowerPoint presentation to City Council, but did not include it in the final version of the GPR survey report.

The blue dots correspond to the little wooden blocks, spray-painted orange, that New South placed along three edges of Vick Cemetery on June 29. Each pair of blocks marks the head and foot of a grave close to or straddling Vick Cemetery’s current property lines. The City asked for this in service of its stubborn quest for a fence around the site.

It’s a little hard to see. I’ll zoom in. You might want to refresh your memory of our little videoed walk last month as you view these maps.

First, the street-edge of Grid 9, which runs from the parking lot past two power poles. At the far upper right, you’ll see a bit of yellow line. It marks the edge of the public right-of-way, and thus the cemetery’s present-day front boundary. New South did not survey the right-of-way, but there is no reason to believe there are no graves there. Look carefully at the fuzzy gray strip slanting across the image. This is the ditch. At the first power pole, at upper right, do you see where it widens a bit? That’s here, where runoff cascades after every hard rain, and crawfish flap their swimmerets. Several blue dots sit right on the line, and others just inside it, where a fence would run if anyone were so unwise as to install one.

Next, Grid 1, the northwest corner of the cemetery. The graves continue along the edge of the right-of-way. As we round the corner, we are in the corridor marked by Piedmont Natural Gas as the location of a natural gas pipeline easement (though no such easement was filed or recorded at Wilson County Register of Deeds.) In other words, as we’ve seen, there is a gas line running along the edge of the cemetery. There are also, as the blue dots indicate, several graves straddling the border.

Next, the middle section of the western edge. Again, several graves straddle the border.

Finally, the back section. The yellow line is the property line. New South surveyed to the line on the western edge of the property, so its red grid line is shown atop the property line. As New South did not survey all the way to the property line on the back edge of the cemetery, we don’t know where or how many graves lie in this narrow strip. Along the west side, several dots lie on the property line, and one completely outside it in the  natural gas pipeline easement.

Lane Street Project: the August 17 city council meeting.

Well, that was a disappointment.

First, before the meeting, not one of the four council members I wrote on August 11 — Bell, Creech, Johnson, and Morgan — responded with as much as an acknowledgment of receipt. Needless to say, none moved for any of the actions requested.

Second, the New South Associates presentation was rather less … robust than I expected. I did appreciate the modified recommendations, which I’ll detail once I get my hands on the actual report, but included a comprehensive cemetery management plan to ensure that future leaders know exactly what exists at the site and what has been done there.

Third, the utter lack of engagement by council, whose members asked exactly two questions. Bell wanted to know what pages the recommendations are on. Evans wanted to know what “cmbs” means (which tells me he didn’t read the report he got in April) and what thirty centimeters is in inches. Nobody else cracked their lips. To be fair, it was not until New South Associates’ representative had begun to speak that Rebecca Agner and another city employee actually trooped in to hand out copies of the updated version of the report to council members. City attorney Jim Cauley, in trying to execute some kind of flex, pointedly asked New South when they had provided the City the report, seeming to imply that it was hot off the press. New South flatly countered with a date four days prior to the meeting — Monday, August 14. (And thus Cauley violated the first rule of cross-examination — don’t ask questions you don’t know the answer to.) Once again, a city staffer got the report and sat it on it until the absolute last minute before giving it to council, turning last night’s presentation into pure performance. What was the point of bringing New South all the way from Greensboro if the city wasn’t going to give council a chance to study and develop questions? Though all seven councilmembers have had the original version since April, and this one is not radically different in content, withholding the updated report smells bad. Still, they needn’t have read the report to ask questions like, “Specifically, how does one install a fence under these conditions?” “Is digging up the parking lot a good idea?” “Should we be concerned about the graves in the public right-of-way?” “How can we mark the graves?”

Fourth — and the good part — come *clap* through *clap* Lane Street Project! Although I couldn’t watch them — Wilson shuts off cameras during public comment — kudos to the citizens who stepped to the mic to give voice to the desires of the descendant community. As Briggs Sherwood said, “We are here to claim our ancestors, to redeem our past. Hallelujah, what an opportunity!”

Lane Street Project: WRAL and the August 17 agenda.

First, WRAL’s reporter advises that his piece on Vick Cemetery will air tonight, August 16, during the 7 o’clock broadcast. Please tune in.

Second, the agenda for Thursday night’s council meeting has been posted. Note item 3d.

This is a surprise, but a generally welcome one, as we have asked the City to take advantage of New South Associates’ expertise. I urge alertness though. Do not let the City position New South as the only voice that matters, and their opinions, therefore, as the end of the discussion about Vick’s future.

On information, Sarah Lowry’s recommendations will go to how the City can prevent further ground disturbance at Vick Cemetery. This is a curious focus as, for the past 110 years, all the unwarranted ground disturbance out there has been at the City’s hand. Who would a fence keep out? Who rampaged through with bush hogs and graders and asphalt and power poles? The City of Wilson and its various contractors, and we already know how to stop that. Recent incursions like dumping and spinning can be thwarted with simple chains that the Cemetery Commission’s grounds crew can unlock when they need to access the site.

I’d rather hear what New South has to say about the bodies lying in the public right-of-way or about the right and role of descendant communities in determining what to do at Vick. If you go to tomorrow’s meeting, please ask New South, or the City, what should be done about the power poles erected inside the cemetery? Or the guy wires that continue to stab into the earth? What are the recommendations for marking individual graves (as has been done in Statesville)? For placement of interpretive signage? Can the parking pad be safely removed (since this is Grant Goings’ bright, new idea)? If so, can  the 18 or so graves beneath it be exhumed (and DNA-tested) and reinterred in Rest Haven? What about exhumation of graves lying in the right-of-way?

Also, ask council for

  • an independent investigation into the disappearance of the headstones removed in 1995-96 (and of the document(s) identifying those markers);
  • ground-penetrating radar of the unsurveyed edges of the cemetery, especially the public right-of-way at the front, where New South’s markers already show the presence of graves;
  • preparation of a full land survey map of the cemetery showing all physical features, easements, and rights-of-way;
  • formal engagement with the descendant community (outside the constrains of a city council meeting).

Please show up in numbers tomorrow night. Take notes. Record. This will be a crucial meeting. Thank you!