Descendants Council

10/14/2021

In just a few days, it will have been three months since a storm tore through East End and Evergreen. Three months since Enrichmond closed the cemeteries. Three months since human remains were exposed when trees were uprooted.

This morning, we sent an open letter to public officials and to John Sydnor, Enrichmond’s executive director and the owner of the cemeteries:

On October 8, the Enrichmond Foundation emailed a questionnaire to our group, the Descendants Council of Greater Richmond Virginia, regarding human remains found at East End Cemetery. The email stated that replies must be made by October 16. This questionnaire is neither an acceptable course of action nor what descendants agreed to after three virtual sessions that Enrichmond organized in early September.

Enrichmond muted participants in the first two sessions, so that descendants could not participate directly or freely in the conversation. Many descendants criticized Enrichmond for silencing our voices after it had solicited our feedback. Under our pressure, Enrichmond unmuted us and allowed us to speak on the third call, held September 9.

We asked for two things at the end of that last Zoom session: for John Sydnor to meet with descendants and for any such meetings to be public and open. We did not ask for an emailed questionnaire.

Enrichmond's representatives told descendants that one issue, how to deal with human remains found at East End, took precedence over all others. We replied that any assembly or group voting on or making decisions about these remains would need to be constituted through an open and public process. Only transparency will give such an entity — and the determinations it makes — legitimacy. Transparency is not built with an emailed questionnaire.

To ensure true transparency, Enrichmond should convene public meetings about the cemeteries. Descendants have asked Enrichmond as well as the government agencies with oversight for historic Black cemeteries to convene such meetings. Descendants made this request in our March 10, 2021, open letter to Governor Ralph Northam. Other citizens have been requesting open, on-the-record meetings about East End and Evergreen for years.

The fate of the remains at East End is a pressing matter. So too is Enrichmond's closure of both cemeteries to the public for nearly three months. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources exercised its authority to compel Enrichmond to hold a public meeting after the July 2020 discovery of commingled human remains at East End. That meeting was deeply flawed, but it sets a precedent for direct government involvement.

What we are asking for now is for the relevant government agencies, those that regulate and fund Enrichmond/Parity, to convene such meetings, and to ensure that they are conducted with the openness, equality, and care that descendants and our ancestors deserve.

07/03/2021

Barry Farmer, descendant, photographed at Evergreen Cemetery, 30 May 2021. In his own words:

“Cemeteries shouldn’t be treated as novelties. They should be respected and cared for as the sacred grounds they were meant to be. We as descendants should continue to honor our ancestors because it’s our responsibility. It is also our right to hold those accountable who have assumed responsibility of the grounds where our ancestors lie to insure that proper care, traditions, and integrity of those grounds are upheld to our satisfaction as descendants. Our ancestors’ resting places are not photo opportunities for political leaders and their constituents to align themselves with organizations who use the grounds as a platform for subpar community service projects to make the public say ‘Awww!’ Pioneers, civil rights activists, and thousands who were treated like second-class citizens were laid here to rest because they were forced to, and over the years they were again neglected and treated like second-class citizens in death. We can’t allow it to continue as their descendants.”

06/28/2021

Maurice Fountain, longtime cemetery volunteer, photographed at East End Cemetery, 30 May 2021. In his own words:

“Through my time pulling up vines and uncovering the occasional headstone, I've come to appreciate the importance of these places as gateways for descendants to connect with their roots and the community at large to connect with a part of history that very often is absent from text books. Preservation of these places is important in order to maintain those links to history, and figuring out what preservation looks like should happen through democratic decision-making that includes descendants and other community members."

06/25/2021

An exciting development: "The vote 'represents an important step toward equity and reckoning with histories of racism,' the [Montpelier Foundation] said. 'The relationship provides a national model for resolving historic imbalances in decision-making, power and authority.'”

ORANGE, Va.—In a breakthrough culminating nearly 30 years of work at James Madison’s Montpelier, descendants of enslaved persons at a major national historic site for the first time will be

06/18/2021

Mary Moorhead, descendant, photographed at East End Cemetery, Henrico Co., VA, 30 May 2021.

In her own words: “What I want for the cemeteries is that the Black people buried there get the respect in death that they never had in life. I want my relatives and the relatives of others to finally rest in peace.”

06/15/2021

Food for thought from Duke University prof Adam Rosenblatt: "The descendant community can be a larger circle than initially appears, with a meaningful place not only for people who trace their bloodlines to a specific site but also those who have 'a shared historical experience.' Debra Taylor Gonzalez-Garcia, the President of Friends of Geer Cemetery (who first arrived in Durham to attend its historically black university), once said of the people buried at that site: 'They’re not my people, but they are my stories.'"

In a video posted on YouTube in late May, three women sit on chairs outdoors. Their green surroundings might take a moment to recognize as a cemetery. You can just make out the headstones and small…

06/14/2021

Rosa Bell Tillman was laid to rest at Evergreen Cemetery in 1930. The daughter of Lewis Tillman and Matilda Stewart, she was born ca. 1859 in Henrico County.

Ms. Tillman worked for many years as a cook in the home of William B. and Ellen (Nalle) Palmer, who lived at 12 W. Franklin Street. William B. Palmer served in the Confederate Army as a lieutenant in the 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, aka Mosby’s Rangers. He was the son of George S. Palmer, a prominent Richmond merchant and an enslaver of 11 people in 1860. The elder Palmer was a partner in Wadsworth, Turner & Co., which sold, among other dry goods, “negro clothing, of every kind”—clothes made of coarse material for enslaved people.

Like his parents, William B. Palmer is buried at Hollywood Cemetery with his wife, in a plot marked by an imposing monument in the immaculately maintained burial ground. Hollywood, promoted by the City of Richmond as a tourist attraction, benefitted from government largesse in its first decades. After years of ad hoc payments from the state legislature, it received a lump sum in 1914 to establish a perpetual care fund for its Confederate sections, more than $200K in today’s dollars.

By contrast, Evergreen, which was established by African Americans in 1891, received no such support. Legislation was finally passed in 2017 to provide funding for the maintenance of a limited number of graves at some historic Black cemeteries in Virginia, but far from enough to reverse the damage done by generations of government neglect, nature, and vandals.

Ms. Tillman’s plot at Evergreen, owned since 2017 by Parity LLC, a holding company affiliated with the Enrichmond Foundation, lies beneath a dense canopy of vegetation just off one of the cemetery’s internal roads. The photos of Evergreen were all taken yesterday, June 13, 2021.

06/13/2021

Erik Lazzaro, descendant, photographed at Evergreen Cemetery, Richmond, VA, 30 May 2031. In his own words:

“My great-grandfather, Carter Braxton, purchased this plot in 1921 for $112.50 after the passing of his brother-in-law. It was probably one of the biggest purchases he ever made. When I tried to learn more about his life in Richmond, I found the home he lived in is now a parking lot and the building where he had his business, Carter’s Meat Market, was bulldozed to make way for I-95; but this marker, which he put up for himself and his family, is still here. However, many Black families have been denied even this common decency, since a large number of grave markers are either missing, hidden, broken, or destroyed.

“We’ve taken down many Confederate monuments, but the same white supremacy that put them up has let these monuments to our Black ancestors fall apart. If keeping Hollywood Cemetery pristine is a sign of respect, what are we saying about the men, women and children whose remains rest here?

“Evergreen, East End, and Virginia’s other Black cemeteries are still segregated in terms of funding, maintenance, and preservation. Society can apologize for the mistakes of the past but there must be real action taken to fix the consequences that have continued into the present. If our government was truly committed to rectifying just a small portion of this egregious history it must help maintain these monuments and preserve their histories for this generation and those after.”

06/10/2021

There’s a twelve-acre complex of six historic Black cemeteries in Richmond’s North Side, now owned by the city, that date to the early 1800s. The first was called Phoenix Burying Ground. The others were Union, Methodist, Ebenezer, Sons and Daughters of Ham, and Sycamore, though the names changed over the decades.

These cemeteries, which were established during slavery by free Blacks for their community, now bear a collective name: Barton Heights Cemeteries. They were named for the town that grew up around, and then swallowed them. That town was named for the developer who bought the first 20 acres that became this new Henrico County municipality, James H. Barton.

White residents whose new homes surrounded the cemeteries complained about them. The General Assembly empowered Barton Heights’ town council to restrict burials, which it did. Black citizens fought back, but the Jim Crow power balance, which so heavily favored whites, could not be tipped in their favor. The cemeteries fell into such disrepair that one of its most famous residents, Rev. John Jasper of Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, was disinterred in 1918 and reburied at Woodland Cemetery, a segregated burial ground that had opened the year before. The City of Richmond annexed Barton Heights in 1914 and took ownership of the cemeteries, then collectively called Cedarwood. Now the responsibility of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities, they are listed as “inactive” on the city’s website.

06/08/2021

Peighton Young is the first in our series of profiles of folks who have kin laid to rest in greater Richmond’s historic African American cemeteries and/or are members of the Black community who have committed to protecting and restoring these sacred sites. After this intro, the words will be from the pictured person. So here are Peighton’s thoughts on our burial grounds after our Memorial Day visit:

“These cemeteries mean so much to me because this is where my relatives are buried. These places are an extension of my family and as such, I want to see them cared for with the utmost love and respect.”