TO THE EDITOR:
The Old Chapel Hill Cemetery consists of six sections that contain gravestones. The four graveyard sites on the east abound with many headstones, ledgers, box tombs and tomb-tales of every single size and shape.
The two sections on the west contain the remains of African-Americans. It contains a few gravestones and a tomb-table but the largest area has either field stones or nothing at all. In the old days, it was common practice for those who could not afford gravestones to use unmarked stones. The cemetery now covers about seven acres.
Over the years, there have been many acts of vandalism in the cemetery. In 1974, there was widespread damage to the headstones. Football fans have damaged the cemetery. In the past, the African-American sections were used a parking lot.
Starting in 2012, the Cemeteries Advisory Board and Preservation Chapel Hill began a project to discover how many unmarked graves there are in the African-American section. The machine they used looked like a fancy and futuristic lawn mower. This machine indicated the spots where the underground land had been disturbed.
They found 475 unmarked graves in the formerly segregated African-American section.
“Not only were these people excluded and forgotten in life but also in death,” Preservation Chapel Hill Executive Director Cheri Szcodronski said. “Although we’ll never be able to put names to these 475 people, we can at least recognize their final resting place and tell their story.”
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier rests in the Arlington Cemetery. It is dedicated to American service members who died without their remains being identified. It is open 365 days a year, and a guard marches in front of it.
That is a beautiful sign of respect.
