Buckhead HOA can’t keep neglecting historic Black cemetery, judge says
The homeowners association for a luxury Buckhead townhome community must stop shirking its responsibility to maintain one of the most historically significant African American cemeteries in metro Atlanta, a Fulton County judge has ruled.
Bluffs at Lenox Homeowners Association is obligated under city of Atlanta zoning ordinances to keep Piney Grove Cemetery — which is adjacent to the townhomes — in good condition for the public, but it let the property fall into disrepair underneath weeds and vines, court records show. Access to the site off Canterbury Road near Ga. 400 has been blocked.
The HOA’s attempts in court to avoid responsibility for the cemetery were rejected Friday by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, including its “awkward” argument that the cemetery could not be considered public property “because no white Atlantans were buried there.”
“This rather ironic notion that racial exclusivity rendered usage private would have been news to the black residents of Atlanta who for decades were unable to use public pools, parks, and transportation,” McBurney wrote in a footnote of his order. “Moreover, the evidence indicates not that whites were excluded but rather that they never sought to be buried there.”
The HOA’s lawyers did not immediately respond to questions about the ruling, which tees up a trial on how much the HOA should pay in damages.
The association was sued in January 2024 by sisters Rhonda Jackson and Audrey Collins, who have more than 30 relatives buried at the cemetery, as well as by the nonprofit they formed in 2023 with Beth Marcus, who grew up nearby. For several years, the trio have been trying to clean up the site, where more than 300 Black people were buried between the 1820s and 1990s.
McBurney declared Friday that Piney Grove is a public cemetery where descendants of people buried there and other visitors have a right to enter, enjoy the property and maintain burial plots. He barred the HOA from interfering with those rights.
“There may soon be nothing left to care for other than memories and the knowledge that somewhere out in that overgrown acreage lie the bodies of loved ones left behind by the construction of a high-end townhouse development,” McBurney said about the HOA’s abandonment of the property.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers did not immediately comment on the case.
McBurney ordered the parties to propose a plan for the cemetery’s restoration and permanent maintenance.
He said visitors don’t have unfettered rights to the property and can’t interfere with HOA members’ enjoyment of the adjacent townhome complex. In the past, Jackson, Collins and their group, Friends of Piney Grove Cemetery, used goats to clear vegetation swamping the graves.
“No chain saws after hours or goats straying onto private lots,” the judge said.
McBurney also said the HOA isn’t obligated to install benches or historical markers in the cemetery.
“The Piney Grove cemetery and its permanent residents are not going anywhere; nor is the townhome community,” McBurney wrote. “Visitors to the cemetery and residents of the townhomes must learn to peaceably coexist.”
The land that included the cemetery was divided up about 30 years ago by the Piney Grove Missionary Baptist Church, which moved to Decatur. The property was rezoned in the early 2000s for development, with the condition that the developers would refurbish the cemetery and the HOA would maintain it for public use.
McBurney said the HOA has shown it won’t voluntarily comply with its obligations. He criticized the HOA’s “overly literalistic view” that to maintain the cemetery it should change nothing.
“This is not a former public park, the swings and slides of which might be relocated or simply torn down,” he wrote. “This is land in which loved ones are buried, placed there to be venerated, not paved over — or abandoned to wild vegetation.”
About the Author
Journalist Rosie Manins is a legal affairs reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
