Volunteers are restoring generations-old headstones.
Advocates are battling developers to keep grounds intact.
Groups are seeking justice for burial grounds paved over to build highways.
The growing movement to save Black cemeteries: nbcnews.to/3uCwKW9
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In 1874, the Greenwood Cemetery was founded as the first Black commercial burial ground for the St. Louis area’s growing Black population after the Civil War.
At least 50,000 people were buried in Greenwood, including at least a half dozen relatives of Raphael Morris.
The Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association, a group of local volunteers and historians, has cleared out about half the cemetery and located several documents to identify those buried.
So far, they’ve found some form of record for at least 35,000 people.
“When we first started in 1999, we had nothing. Today, you could give me a name and I can go to the... records and say, ‘Yes, this person is there,’” says a historian with the group.
“For some of these souls, the only record of their existence may be Greenwood Cemetery records.”
In Georgia, Friends of Pierce Chapel African American Cemetery have spent nearly three years cleaning out the cemetery and identifying people buried there.
The group has also been lobbying an electric company and a cable provider to remove power and cable lines they installed.
In Durham, NC, a local group has partnered with a monument company, Eagle Scouts, and community orgs to restore Geer Cemetery, where 1,600+ Black people are buried.
The group has worked to clear the land, hold tours for the public, and learn all it can about those buried at Geer
In Richmond, Virginia, preservationists have urged city and state leaders to cancel plans to build a railway through the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground in Richmond, whose 31 acres are marred by billboards, an abandoned gas station, railroad tracks and part of Interstate 64.
Read more from @CiCiAdams_ about the movement to preserve and restore Black cemeteries across the country:
nbcnews.to/3GI1g30
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