African American WNC cemeteries to get 2nd life with 9/11 Day of Service grant

ASHEVILLE - With a surge of funding and an expansive vision, Land of Sky Regional Council will be bringing a new effort to restore and maintain the historic African American cemeteries of Western North Carolina.

Titled ‘The Remembrance Project,’ Land of Sky will launch a new nonprofit, the WNC African American Cemetery Coalition, with the intent to "preserve the physical integrity of these historic sites and amplify their cultural significance through awareness and community engagement," a Land of Sky news release said.

AmeriCorps funded the program with a 9/11 Day of Service grant of $338,209, which aims to remember “the heroes, armed forces, first responders, and countless others’ acts of service to defend our nation’s freedom.”

The Remembrance Project will launch Sept. 11, 2024 as Land of Sky plans to bring 250 WNC volunteers together to clean-up historic cemeteries three times a year.

If approved for two additional years of funding, the project could receive a total of $1 million in funding.

Vicki Jennings, Land of Sky’s Mountain Mobility Program Manager, the inspiration for the project came from a soup supper in Mars Hill, where Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church had organized a fundraiser to maintain its historic Black cemetery.

For Jennings, the idea of selling soup to maintain history wasn’t enough.

“How much soup would a church have to sell to restore a cemetery?” said Jennings, in reference to learning about the fundraiser.

“I just kept thinking about what an injustice that is,” Jennings said. “And what an injustice that would be if every cemetery had to sell soup, bowls of soup, to get enough money to restore something that's so important to, you know, a community, to a neighborhood, to families.”

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'There are times where the color line disappears'

Jonathan McCoy, Mount Olive’s interim pastor and director for the Center for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Mars Hill University, said the fundraiser came as previous cemetery caretakers passed away, leading to discussion of how to take care of the land.

The event resembled a time when “color lines” disappeared, McCoy said.

“You see the meshing that happens in this area. That there are times where the color line disappears,” said McCoy. “And so there's support for the community. The color line goes away for the support of the community.”

The community of Mars Hill and Madison County rallied behind the initiative, raising more than $3,000, McCoy said.

“For an impromptu community dinner? That's very, very good,” McCoy said.

The Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church is located near the historic Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School, where Black students in Madison County attended a segregated school from 1928 until county schools were integrated in 1964. Mars Hill recently passed a resolution supporting the school, the Citizen Times reported.

The cemetery, however, faced another problem ― losing connections.

The church’s protocol of burial, the location of the interred and questions about property lines were some of the primary concerns, McCoy said.

Notably, a chicken coop was installed not 50 feet from the cemetery grounds by an adjacent landowner. The presence of dirt tracks also indicated the area had been used as a track for four wheelers, McCoy said.

As many Black community members have moved away from the region, McCoy said that there are only likely “two to three” families remaining that keep deep connections to the Mars Hill area.

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“People that didn’t even grow up here, but their family talked about Mars Hill. This is where they're from,” McCoy said, while standing in the Historic Mount Olive Cemetery. “But do they want to make that trek down? Down here to make that connection?”

McCoy said that this isn’t the only cemetery in the region with a similar story.

“There's a Black cemetery we know of in Hot Springs, it's been overgrown and fading away because there's nobody there to keep it up and there's no connection,” McCoy said.

Ellen Pearson, chair of the South Asheville Cemetery Association and a UNC Asheville professor, said “there is so much potential in this grant.”

“This grant is going to help these little groups that are trying to organize information and cemetery workdays and reclamation,” Pearson said. “There's a lot of duplication of labor there that I think that consortium is going to help with.”

The new nonprofit could potentially help produce more funding for cemeteries while connecting volunteers like McCoy together, Pearson said.

“For us to be able to get together, share resources, share ideas and just be able to support one another, a consortium that could lobby for example, reparations funding, and reclaim and restore these cemeteries,” Pearson said.

The first project event will be set for Sept. 11, 2024. As the 9/11 Day of Service initiative aims to recognize fallen veterans, The Remembrance Project will also remember the graves of veterans by placing an American flag by their tombstone.

Jennings hopes that the new nonprofit will help prevent losing local connections to these cemeteries.

“We're really excited about the opportunity that we have to preserve the heritage and the culture that is just a step from being lost,” Jennings said.

Jennings said that Land of Sky’s first priority is hiring a program manager, and “then we’ll go forward with all of the details.”

Will Hofmann is the Growth and Development Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Got a tip? Email him at WHofmann@citizentimes.com. 

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: New 'Remembrance Project' to restore, protect WNC Black cemeteries