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While many Americans used the holiday to kick back or play golf, others spent Martin Luther King Jr. day volunteering as part of a national day of service.

In Richmond, nearly 100 volunteers used the day off to do restoration work at the East End Cemetery, a historic Black cemetery on the Henrico border. The cemetery, established in 1897 next to Evergreen Cemetery, is the final resting place for an estimated 17,000 Richmonders, including many famous figures from the turn of the 20th century.

Some 100 volunteers came out, including several women from Kappa Epsilon Psi, the military sorority made up of veterans and active duty women soldiers. This was their second time at the annual Martin Luther King Jr cleanup, now in its 3rd year, but the Friends of East End Cemetery host weekly cleanups every Saturday.

“People usually talk about the prominent folks here, like Richard Tancil, a doctor born as a slave, but regular folks are buried here too, and their churches, employee groups, families, funded this,” said Brian Palmer, a member of the Friends of East End Cemetery, during the event. He and Erin Palmer, his wife, have been active members of the group since 2014.

Kids clean Thelma Callahan’s headstone, which they found

The cemetery is in disrepair; many headstones lay flat, and the grounds are overgrown with English ivy and choking vines. Brian Palmer, who wrote an op-ed for us on the cemetery last June, told us why the cemetery fell into neglect.

“There are misconceptions about why these cemeteries are in this condition,” he said, briefly running through the many ways people of color were discriminated against and disenfranchised following Reconstruction. “Jim Crow knocked this cemetery into a coma. The laws starved these places of resources that went to Confederate monuments and cemeteries, and without the right to vote, people couldn’t do anything about it.”

Erin Palmer estimates that they’ve cleared 4.5 acres out of 12.5 acres suitable for burial on the site, which contains a 3.5-acre ravine. In total, they’ve uncovered some 3,000 headstones and temporary courtesy markers, and found the stories of thousands of Richmonders that seemed lost to history. “Sometimes, we have five volunteers plus the regulars; sometimes we have 50; sometimes we have 100 plus, like today,” she said.

Brian Palmer, a photographer, shoots the memorials to share on Instagram and for international reach on findagrave.com. The site hosts 3,815 images from East End Cemetery. On their own website, the group posts the stories of the people whose graves they’ve photographed. “We’re doing two things,” he said. “We’re physically reclaiming the space and reclaiming the history.”

“We do this every Saturday, but it matters on this particular day that we are in this cemetery, which was built out of love in response to hate,” he said, referencing the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. “This is a tremendous historical asset for the city of Richmond and the country, and love is what is going to save it.”

Photos by Brian Palmer

As a member of the volunteer effort, I’m happy to see stories about the ongoing reclamation of East End and Evergreen cemeteries.

The story, however, needs correction. The Great Depression may have forced some African Americans to leave Richmond, but between 1930 and 1940, the “Negro” population increased, according to the U.S. Census from those years, from 52,988 to 61,251. (The Black population did decline from 1920 to 1930.) The main force affecting the lives of Black Virginians in the first half of the 20th century—and the community’s ability to maintain its cemeteries—was Jim Crow.

A sustained assault on African American rights and wealth, in Virginia and across the South, began immediately after the Civil War. The wholesale disenfranchisement of Black men—not to mention terrorism, implied and executed—meant that the community had no power over the public purse. White elites were free to use public money as they saw fit—to fund Confederate graves and monuments, for example—and to reassert their supremacy in all areas of civic life.

The Black community was under attack from many directions through institutional discrimination. It was starved of public resources. It’s no wonder its cemeteries suffered.

There are new developments in the cemetery situation. Evergreen Cemetery was recently sold to a small nonprofit called Enrichmond. East End is likely the next purchase. The Friends of East End Cemetery, of which I am a member, will hold a public meeting to discuss what’s happening at East End. (Details below.) We will update the community on the progress of the restoration effort and share our short- and long-term goals. Descendants and community members are invited to speak. We have also invited Enrichmond and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF), the state-chartered agency that will provide the conservation easement on the property, to say a few words and to answer questions from the public about their plans.

The Friends of East End Cemetery have been at work since the summer of 2013. The Evergreen Restoration Foundation is only a year old, but it has already clawed back a tremendous amount of that historic cemetery from nature. All of us stand on the shoulders of the people who launched earlier efforts, such as National Park Service Ranger Jim Bell. Such volunteer initiatives ended because public support didn’t follow. We’re hoping that funds the state has pledged to these efforts, through VOF and HB 1547, will go to the organizations actually doing the work of reclamation and restoration.

Event details:

Date: Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Time: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Location: Robinson Theater Community Arts Center, 2903 Q Street, Richmond

Top photo via brianpalmer.photos

Volunteers Work to Restore East End Cemetery for Martin Luther King Jr. Day Of Service

OPED: Friends of East End Cemetery aim to set record straight on disregarded Black cemeteries