HENRY COUNTY, Ga. — Volunteers banded together Sunday to clean up a long-abandoned African American cemetery.
Channel 2’s Bryan Mims was in Henry County, where the community said many of those buried there were enslaved people who worked on a 4,000 acre plantation.
Now near what is now Locust Grove, where the project is underway, many people there didn’t even know the cemetery existed.
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Those passing by would never know it was a cemetery, hidden back in the woods behind a subdivision.
Volunteers were out at the cemetery to clear out brush and little trees, filling up garbage bags.
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Using rakes and saws, members of the community are working together to create a proper place of rest for those buried there, and honor them to correct what they see as an injustice.
Shawndrea Gay, who founded the Honor Thy Roots organization, said she found the cemetery while looking into her family tree.
“Just doing genealogy research and I traced my ancestors back to this cemetery,” Gay told Mims.
She told Channel 2 Action News that she learned the cemetery was the final resting place for her ancestors, many of whom were enslaved and had worked on the Weems family plantation.
Gay estimated that as many as 2,000 people, including Native Americans, were buried beneath the trees in the area.
She said she’s determined to see these departed are forgotten no more.
“This is history, and I feel like this is a part of it that shouldn’t be erased or ignored,” Gay said.
In May, she formed Honor Thy Roots as a non-profit.
Across the grounds, flags are placed to show where cadaver dogs and ground scanners have detected human remains.
So far, Gay said they’ve found about 400 burial sites.
Dabney Tuggle, a descendant of the Weems family, said the state of things is upsetting.
“It makes me feel very sad that it wasn’t kept up, it really does,” Tuggle said. “I don’t like it.”
Nearly all the graves have no headstones – or any markers at all. One small headstone, cracked and crumbled, marks the grave of Sally Weems, who died in 1910.
Beyond family of the departed, neighbors living in the area are getting involved too.
“It makes us feel better just doing the work and cleaning it,” Gay said. “It brings joy in a bad situation.”
Tori Albrecht, how lives nearby, said that when she learned about the plantation, she had to get involved in helping clean it up.
“It’s just horrible, they just deserve so much better,” Albrecht said. “For this to be in the condition that it is, is just very said.”
Gay said she thinks there could be up to 2,000 people buried there.
Eventually, Gay wants to place markers or crosses at all of the graves, and possibly set up a small museum for visitors to learn about the people resting there and pay their respects.
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