Vick cemetery

Lane Street Project: council talking points, 19 February 2026 edition.

Vick Cemetery’s not on the February 19 Agenda, but that doesn’t stop you from speaking out in the audience comment portion of Thursday’s city council meeting. The impassioned remarks of a few of Lane Street Project’s descendant community and allies snatched the attention of council and the Wilson Times last month. Two weeks later, after a rambunctious discussion, four council members stood ten toes down to restore the public broadcast of the citizens’ comments portion of council meetings. Your voice matters, and now it can be heard by folks who can’t physically attend meetings.

If you’re thinking about speaking tomorrow, here are a few questions you might ask:

  • what is the status of interpretive signage at Vick Cemetery? Has the draft language been approved?
  • when will the plat map of Vick Cemetery be recorded with Register of Deeds?
  • will the damage done to Odd Fellows Cemetery — specifically the removal of soil under the kerbing around the Tate family plot — be repaired?

  • why was the City using heavy equipment to clearcut the north side of Rountree Cemetery?

I was going to add “why hasn’t the Vick Cemetery city project page been updated since 15 October 2025?,” but I double-checked and, lo and behold, there’s been activity. The original October 15 update has been modified slightly, and this has been added (in January? I’m pretty sure February, but I quibble):

Finally:

  • We want ground-penetrating radar of the public right-of-way.

Lane Street Project: cars dash through the snow at Vick.

There was a time when spinning doughnuts over the graves in Vick Cemetery was commonplace. As the message spread that this is sacred space, and as the Cemetery Commission’s crews began to care for the grounds, this kind of desecration had become rare.

Unfortunately, someone has again disrespected our cemetery by driving vehicles wildly through the snow that fell over the weekend. I deeply grateful to Heather Goff and her crew, who discovered the tire marks. Concerned about damage, they plan to set up cones to block access to the cemetery’s surface until the snow melts.

Lane Street Project: the problem with “next steps.”

Let’s circle back for a moment to Wilson Communications and Marketing Director Rebecca Agner’s comment about the status of the cemetery ditch incident:

Let me tell you the problem with this.

Pro-blems.

First, “the marker near the ditch” is at least two Vick Cemetery markers uncovered and broken when contractors scraped the ditch bank. It’s also sections of concrete kerbing damaged at the Tate family plot in Odd Fellows.

Let them dismiss that as semantics though. There is a more critical issue.

New South Associates is a highly respected cultural resource management firm. Many regard them as the Southeast’s gold standard for geophysical services like ground-penetrating radar. Kudos to the City for contracting with New South to handle this work, both at Vick Cemetery and, earlier, at the private Farmer family cemetery at the corner of Kenan and Pine Streets downtown (a project no one had to beg them to do.) 

However, for all the expertise it brings, New South is operating at a glaring deficit here: its “additional guidance” on “next steps” comes with no input from or critique by Vick’s essential stakeholders, the descendant community.

Nearly everything we know about the history of Vick Cemetery comes from the collective memories of its descendant community and the six years of my research as documented in Black Wide-Awake. It is we who have cried out for years that graves lie in the public right-of-way and must be located and protected. It is we who have pulled back the curtains on the repeated abuses the City has heaped upon the bones of our ancestors. Yet, even as our fearful prophecies have manifested, we remain shut out of discussion and decision-making about our own dead. The City stands mute, ignoring our pleas for information and demands for inclusion. And New South, under contract to the City, cannot talk out of school.

Whose graves are these? How many others lie next to the road? Who authorized excavation in the ditch? In Odd Fellows Cemetery?

New South and the City will decide what is best for Vick. They will cover up, or move, or whatever, the grave markers broken on December 10, and you and I will find out about it when they feel like updating their webpage to tell us. When it comes to decisions impacting our sacred spaces, Wilson moves in silence. In darkness. Undercover. Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project, however, will continue to train a sharp and steady white light on Vick Cemetery and on every person who claims a superior right to decide its future — or who hangs back and lets others exclude us.

Lane Street Project: day 26.

A longtime Lane Street Project supporter sent this footage yesterday of the ditch alongside Vick Cemetery. Two days short of a month since a contractor’s excavator unearthed and shattered grave markers in Vick and dug several feet into Odd Fellows, exposing the boundary walls of the Tate family plot, the City of Wilson has yet issue a statement, an explanation, or an apology. Nor have they updated the City Projects webpage.

What they have been doing, however, is shoveling dirt back into the ditch. Sigh.

The next city council meeting is Thursday, January 15. A few days in advance, I’ll post a few talking points for your consideration if you are thinking of signing up for public comment.

Video courtesy of L. Gamble. Thanks for keeping eyes on this!

Lane Street Project: Vick Cemetery check-in; or New Year, same ….

More than three weeks have passed since contractors unearthed and broke grave markers while excavating the ditch bank adjacent to Vick Cemetery. The orange safety fencing remains around one slab. The other juts up from the dirt a few feet away. No information, no update, no apology, no plan.

The City’s City Projects page, presented with my New Year comments as I roll up my sleeves and pull my earrings off:

 

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: 16 days later.

I took this photo one week ago this morning. As far as I know, if you drove down Bishop L.N. Forbes Street today, this is what you’d see.

Sixteen days later, and we have had no explanation of what happened on the morning of December 10; no explanation of the original plan; no explanation of what the stones are and whether there are graves beneath them; no explanation of the path forward.

And no apology.

The City of Wilson wants you to believe that things have changed since it brutalized Vick Cemetery in the 1990s. Maybe some have, but the disrespect remains constant.