DEL.ICIO.USRediscovered Clayton graves may be moved
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, November 10, 2008
Seventy-four-year-old Flossie Bailey has not been able to visit her grandfather’s grave for years because she would have had to drive through a landfill, dodge bulldozers, hike through a quarry and trek through years of weeds.
Next year, she may simply have to drive to a historic African-American cemetery in Riverdale.
Pouya Dianat/pdianat@ajc.com
Buried a mile beyond Hartsfield-Jackson’s fifth runway and beside a quarry are 311 bodies, some believed to have been slaves. An excavation company has agreed to pay to relocate the graves.
Pouya Dianat/pdianat@ajc.com
An excavation company has agreed to pay to relocate the graves.
The Clayton County Commission is expected to issue a permit Tuesday for an archaeologist to relocate 311 abandoned African-American graves from a quarry near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to Carver Memorial Gardens on Upper Riverdale Road.
Some of the graves date back to the 1800s and may include former slaves.
Stephens MDS, a College Park rock and dirt recycling company, rediscovered the old cemetery while expanding its 200-acre landfill for demolition debris.
“We’ve been here eight years and have never seen anyone try to access it,” said Wade Brannan, of Stephens MDS. “It’s about as adverse an environment for a cemetery as you can create. We felt it needed to be relocated so families have better access to it.”
The graveyard, known as the old Union Bethel AME Church Cemetery, sits on a little more than an acre in the shadows of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s fifth runway in northern Clayton County.
The majority of it is in the middle of Stephens’ landfill. About a quarter of it sits on Lafarge Aggregates Quarry, off West Lees Mill Road.
Accessing the cemetery is not an option. The forest housing the 311 graves rises out of the quarry. It is surrounded by mounds of gravel, concrete highway barriers, broken toilets and other debris.
“I described it as a mushroom. They cut everything down around it and you have to climb to get to it,” said Jeff Gardner, an archaeologist with Brockington and Associates who is handling the project.
Even if the cemetery were accessible, finding a loved one would be difficult. Only eight of the 311 graves have headstones. Few records exist, and historians are unaware of the cemetery. The grandson of the former church pastor said he doesn’t remember any of the people buried in the cemetery.
This week, Gardner will mail letters to about 30 possible descendants, but Bailey is the only confirmed relative.
The Atlanta woman remembers visiting the cemetery as a child, but a headstone no longer marks her family grave, Gardner said.
Bailey could not be reached for comment.
“When you deal with something like this and don’t have many families,” Brannan said, “you have to deal with it like it’s your own family.”
Brannan and Gardner hope to find more descendants at a public hearing, scheduled for Tuesday before the Clayton County Commission.
The hearing is required by state law whenever human remains are disturbed for development.
State law prefers leaving cemeteries in place. However, the law does allow developers who wish to move graves to apply for a county permit, hire an archaeologist and attempt to find the descendants through a public hearing, historic preservationist Kenneth H. Thomas Jr. said.
“We’re lucky here in Georgia there is a process that protects cemeteries,” Thomas said. “Moving cemeteries is rare. You have to prove the need and show you tried your best to find family.”
The Union Bethel AME Church used the cemetery up to the late 1930s. The last readable headstone shows a burial in 1936.
Since then, the congregation has changed names and moved several times. The cemetery was abandoned, vandalized and overgrown, leaving only the few headstones, Gardner said.
More than 30 of the graves are believed to belong to children, including one of the marked headstones for a 3-month-old.
“It’s sad that these families can’t get to the cemetery,” Gardner said. “Of course Stephens wants to continue its quarry operations, but they really want these people to have an accessible home for their families.”
Gardner said he had actually found the cemetery in 1993 while studying the property for a power line project for Georgia Power. Georgia Power agreed to leave the cemetery undisturbed.
If the county approves the cemetery move, archaeologists will begin hand-digging the graves and any artifacts in January. Several vases and other shards of glass have been found.
They will be placed in burial boxes and then reburied in the Carver cemetery, about five miles away. A monument honoring Union Bethel and a map of the graves will be posted at Carver and the county libraries.
The reburial will take several months and cost Stephens “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Brannan said.
County officials and Brannan say it’s worth it for Bailey and the other families.
“We are ensuring that these people have a respectful and dignified resting place,” Clayton County Commission Chairman Eldrin Bell said. “That’s what is important.”
GIVE YOUR INPUT
The Clayton County Commission will hold a public hearing for descendants of those buried at Union Bethel Church AME Cemetery Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the county administration building, 112 Smith St., Jonesboro.
Marked graves at Union Bethel AME Church Cemetery:
• James Thomas Glass, Nov. 18, 1893-Feb 3, 1894
• D.L. Elliott, Jan. 4, 1886-Oct. 6, 1908
• James Brooks, died March 7, 1901
• Alex Moore, died May 2, 1936
• DJ, 1888
• DA, 1893
• UBA
• ASSOC
• Tommy Lee Nash, died in 1935 as a child*
*Unmarked grave, but records say he is buried there “beside a cedar tree.”
Source: Jeff Gardner
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