Atlas Obscura recently posted an article about restoration efforts at a “long-lost” African-American cemetery in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The story is numbingly familiar, of course, though each of these cemeteries followed a unique path from prime to nadir to rediscovery. Toward the end of the piece, in which we learn that historians at Middle Tennessee State University are spearheading the effort to reclaim Pleasant Garden — there’s this refreshing bit:

The city is interested in restoring it, too. As we have seen in Statesville, North Carolina, there’s nothing that inherently prevents a city from investing in the reclamation of privately owned (or abandoned) cemeteries. The City of Wilson’s representatives have held up their hands against involvement with Odd Fellows Cemetery, citing a “slippery slope” argument. In other words, if they do for Odd Fellows, they’ll have to do for all old private cemeteries in the city whose owners are absent or unknown. Wilson has made a choice.

Actually, there are only a handful of private cemeteries within Wilson’s city limits. The two most prominent, other than the LSP graveyards, are the Winstead family cemetery surrounded by the parking lot of the old Parkwood Mall and the tiny cemetery at Pine and Kenan Streets that the City paid good money to have surveyed via ground-penetrating radar back in 2019. (I blogged about the latter, but apparently accidentally deleted the post a couple of months ago.) However, none of the others holds the historical significance of Odd Fellows. Founded by Samuel H. Vick, Wilson’s most prominent 19th/early 20th century African-American for accomplished African-American men and women locked out of burial in bucolic, segregated Maplewood, Odd Fellows deserves the recognition and sustained care that only the City can provide.

Thank you for sending me this link, Debbie Price Gouldin!