Buckhead HOA settles fight to maintain historic Black cemetery
A homeowners association for a luxury Buckhead condo community has agreed to fund the restoration and maintenance of a historic Black cemetery on its property, ending an almost two-year court battle with descendants of people buried there.
Bluffs at Lenox Homeowners Association will pay a confidential amount to local nonprofit Friends of Piney Grove Cemetery, which will use the money to restore an overgrown acre of land beside the HOA’s 29 townhomes. More than 300 Black people were buried there between the 1820s and 1990s, but weeds, vines and fallen trees now clog the site.
The HOA, formed in 2014, neglected its obligation under city of Atlanta zoning rules to maintain the public cemetery, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney decided in October, teeing up a trial on damages.
Access to Piney Grove Cemetery, off Canterbury Road near Ga. 400, has been blocked for years.
On Monday, McBurney commended the HOA and the nonprofit for their settlement and approved their plan to clean up the cemetery for public use. It protects the rights of the HOA and its members to enjoy their property while allowing the nonprofit and its contractors to clear vegetation and repair gravestones, among other things.
Long-term maintenance of the cemetery falls on the HOA’s shoulders, under the settlement.
“I thought it was a very creative outcome,” McBurney said during a court hearing.
Sisters Rhonda Jackson and Audrey Collins, who have more than 30 relatives buried at the cemetery, hugged their lawyers outside McBurney’s courtroom. They formed Friends of Piney Grove Cemetery in 2023 and sued the HOA in January 2024 with help from Jones Day attorneys, who worked the case for free.
“Our clients are very pleased with the outcome and look forward to turning the page and working with the HOA toward a fully restored cemetery that will benefit the public and the descendants and those who are buried there,” Mike McConnell, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Lawyers for the HOA did not immediately comment on the settlement.
Until recently, the HOA had tried to persuade McBurney that it wasn’t responsible for the cemetery’s upkeep. But in October, he rejected the HOA’s arguments, including that the cemetery had been abandoned and was not a public place because no white Atlantans are buried there. The HOA argued in part that the cemetery was privately reserved for Black church members.
The case is important, McBurney said Monday. He said both sides have “co-existing, occasionally conflicting, sets of rights.”
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 developers would refurbish the cemetery and an HOA would maintain it for public use.
In 2015, Bluffs at Lenox developer Mike Smith publicly confirmed the HOA would oversee maintenance of the cemetery, amid widespread concern about the burial ground’s neglected state.
Frustrated by the HOA’s inaction, Jackson, Collins and others tried in recent years to clear vegetation from the cemetery, including with goats.
Under the plan signed Monday, the HOA can restrict public access to the cemetery at night and prohibit “raucous activity” there. It will remove a “no trespassing” sign and allow vegetation to be cleared out in accordance with city rules.
Piney Grove Cemetery was one of 10 sites placed by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation on its 2024 “Places in Peril” list. At the time, Wright Mitchell, the trust’s president and CEO, said the cemetery is a rare example of an intact African American burial ground that contains both enslaved and freed individuals.
About the Author
Journalist Rosie Manins is a legal affairs reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
