April 30, 2021
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As a child, Linda Davis and her mother broke clay pots over the gravesites of their ancestors, allowing the flowers in them to take root.
When she returned to Brooklyn Cemetery in Athens, Georgia, decades later in 2009, her grandparents’ temporary grave markers were lost, and shrubs and overgrowth blanketed the site. But it still felt like home to Davis, and she knew then it was up to her to restore the cemetery.
“When I walk through the cemetery, it’s like walking down the old streets of my community,” she said.
Similar Black cemeteries are scattered throughout the United States, telling the story of the country’s deep past of cemetery segregation. As these burial grounds for the dead mirrored the racial divisions of the living, Black communities organized to defend the dignity of their deceased and oppose racist cemetery policies.