Visitors to Oakland Cemetery's annual Capturing the Spirit of Oakland tour may be asked to dig deep for a couple of deceased sisters.
That’s digging in the figurative sense: Beatrice Thompson and Estelle Henderson have lain in peace for decades. But the passage of years has left their headstones needing repairs. That means money.
This year, people taking the popular tour at Atlanta’s oldest public park can contribute cash to spruce up the stones and site commemorating two African-Americans who rose to positions of prominence at a time when such accomplishments were rare for women of color. Thompson was a physician; her sister, a lawyer.
Visitors on the first weekend of the tour pitched in more than $3,000. This is the final weekend of the tour, in which actors portray people buried in the cemetery. Any surplus money will be used next year to help fund improvements to the cemetery’s African-American grounds.
This will mark the third year Oakland has targeted a site for contributions during Spirit tours. Two years ago, tourgoers helped buy a stone for a businesswoman who ran a brothel; last year, contributors made sure a character known as the "goat man" got his marker.
This year, contributions will highlight two sisters who excelled in medicine and business, said LaDoris Bias-Davis. A Decatur resident, she’s portraying Thompson, who for decades treated patients in her Athens office.
“She was very much in love with life,” said Bias-Davis, who’s portrayed others buried in the cemetery in past tours. “She didn’t buy into the negative.”
Instead, she took advantage of a benefactor’s generosity, attending Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn. “She did not want to disappoint her benefactor,” said Bias-Davis, “so she graduated with honors.” After getting her degree in 1901, she headed to Athens. She died in 1964.
Her sister, meanwhile, pursued law. Admitted to the Alabama Bar in 1919, she was a professor at Morris Brown College in Atlanta. She died in 1936.
The two are buried side by side.
Tickets for the tour are sold out, but donors can still contribute at the museum's gift shop, open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and 9 a.m.-8 p.m. weekends. Or they can go online: www.oaklandcemetery.com/support/donate-now/.
Oakland Cemetery is located at 248 Oakland Ave. S.E., Atlanta.
