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In US, forgotten black cemeteries rediscovered
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Caretaker: A volunteer who came to maintain the cemetery mows the lawn on the Day of Action at the Olivewood Cemetery. (AFP/Cécile Clocheret)
T
he babies are gone and so are the veterans. Buried at the edge of an African-American cemetery in the United States city of Houston, their bodies were washed away by a nearby bayou during major storms in past decades.
Under the blazing Texas sun, dozens of volunteers mowed grass and cleaned tombstones recently to help save what is left of Olivewood Cemetery's 4,000 graves.
Some parts of the cemetery at first appear forgotten, with broken or dirty headstones.
But the graveyard is in fact receiving newfound care — part of a modern push to preserve black heritage, as interest in saving neglected or even erased African-American historical sites spikes.
The "George Floyd murder, I think it just was a crystallizing moment," said Antoinette Jackson, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, explaining the new interest in such places.
African-American cemeteries "have been continually erased and information about them silenced," she said.
Margott Williams, president of the Descendants of Olivewood nonprofit, laments those whose graves have washed away at the Houston cemetery: "There were babies back there. I don't see my babies back there anymore. There were veterans back there. I don't see my veterans back there."
