As headstones recede further into weeds and vines at one of the most historically significant African American cemeteries in metro Atlanta, a fight over the site’s upkeep has entered a county courthouse.
Buckhead’s Piney Grove Cemetery is the subject of a new lawsuit brought by some of the descendants of those buried there against the homeowners association allegedly responsible for maintaining the property, owned at least in part by developers. The cemetery covers about an acre of land off Canterbury Rd near Ga. 400 and is home to the graves of more than 300 Black people buried between the 1820s and 1990s.
The 86-page complaint was filed Jan. 5 by sisters Rhonda Jackson and Audrey Collins, who have more than 30 relatives buried at the cemetery, as well as 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 burial site.
They claim that the homeowners group should clear and maintain the cemetery, and provide better public access to it. Restoring the cemetery for public use and education is the main goal of Friends of Piney Grove Cemetery, which has received some help from volunteers and local civic organizations including the Rotary Club of Buckhead. Before the cemetery can be surveyed to determine all grave sites, it must be cleared of fallen dead trees and encroaching vegetation.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
“Within the Piney Grove Cemetery are stories of those too often not told,” the cemetery group told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in written responses to questions. “We want the cemetery and the people buried there to be treated with dignity and allow future generations to appreciate the important connection the cemetery has to the history of Atlanta.”
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
The Bluffs at Lenox Homeowners Association is obligated to maintain the cemetery, located beside its gated townhome complex, but instead is neglecting the site and preventing volunteers from clearing it themselves, the plaintiffs claim. They want the association to remove the weeds and debris from around the graves and keep the vegetation there under control, while allowing others to undertake additional remediation work such as fixing broken and misplaced gravestones.
Erin Murray O’Connell, the association’s general counsel, said it has yet to finish reviewing the complaint and relevant facts, but denies the “vast majority” of the allegations against it. She said the association has routinely maintained access to the cemetery since the association was formed in 2014. She did not directly address the issue of the cemetery’s maintenance.
“The HOA has not prohibited access,” O’Connell told the AJC on Wednesday. “The complaint attempts to blame a nonprofit townhome association with 29 townhomes and uniquely diverse members/owners for the actions of prior cemetery owners that had an interest in the cemetery property (or still do) long before the association was created.”
In May, O’Connell told the AJC that the cemetery “has been maintained in an undisturbed natural state in accordance with the governing documents for the association” since the townhomes were occupied after being built in 2016.
In court filings, the plaintiffs say the association’s “natural state” approach to cemetery maintenance “is creating the conditions choking the Piney Grove Cemetery out of existence.” They claim the association must continuously keep weeds, vines, shrubs and other vegetation at bay.
Complicated history
For more than 100 years, the cemetery was owned by a Baptist church that acquired the property in 1899 and continued to allow public burials there through the 1990s. That’s when the church building was demolished following a storm, and the church relocated to Decatur, records show.
Some of the cemetery may still be owned by the church. It divided the land containing the cemetery into three parcels and sold two of them to a developer in 2002, according to the complaint. Once in the hands of developers, the cemetery was largely neglected, the plaintiffs claim.
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Some descendants of those buried in the cemetery were dismayed at its state when they visited over the years.
The lawsuit alleges that developers promised to maintain the cemetery through a homeowners association for a planned townhome complex, as a condition of zoning approval by the city of Atlanta, for which there is a written record. Construction was delayed by the 2006 crash of the real estate market.
In 2015, Bluffs at Lenox developer Mike Smith publicly confirmed that the homeowners association would oversee maintenance of the cemetery, amid widespread concern about the burial ground’s neglected state.
“Eight years have elapsed since Mr. Smith made his comments in 2015, and the HOA has failed to maintain the cemetery,” the lawsuit states. “Contrary to the placement of historic markers and benches on manicured paths as promised … the HOA has deliberately allowed years of unrestrained growth of trees, shrubs, vines and other plants to create an impenetrable barrier to most of the graves of the more than 300 people buried there.”
Frustrated by the association’s apparent inaction, Jackson, Collins and Marcus said they and others made their own attempts at cleaning up the cemetery over the years. They said the association clamped down on those efforts after Friends of Piney Grove Cemetery used part of an $11,000 Rotary grant to hire a herd of goats to eat the vegetation swamping the graves in the spring of 2023.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Since then, the cemetery has fallen into a worse state, the group said. A thin strip of land alongside the gated Bluffs at Lenox development remains the only access to the cemetery, which is not signposted.
“The HOA’s complete abdication of the duties it owes to the public and descendants of persons buried at the cemetery flouts Georgia law and makes a mockery of the conditions that were willfully accepted as a means to build the luxury townhomes,” the lawsuit states, referencing Atlanta’s zoning conditions for the development.
History in jeopardy
Piney Grove Cemetery is one of 10 sites placed by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation on its 2024 “Places in Peril” list. The trust states on its website that the cemetery is “one of the last vestiges of the several African American communities that once thrived in the area,” including Johnsontown, Lynwood Park and Armour.
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
W. Wright Mitchell, the trust’s president and CEO, said it “would be a travesty” for the cemetery to remain inaccessible under a tangle of fallen trees, vegetation, trash and debris. Mitchell said there are few comparable singularly African American cemeteries in the Atlanta area.
“It’s a significant historic resource because it’s a rare example of an intact African American burial ground that contains both enslaved and freed individuals,” Mitchell told the AJC.
In addition, the cemetery has deep personal meaning for descendants of those buried there. Family members want to make sure their ancestors’ remains and final resting places are honored.
The trust does not know of any graves that have been encroached on, but many headstones “have been broken, knocked over and are no longer in their original location” Mitchell said.
The relatives of a World War I veteran buried in the cemetery hope to install a grave marker provided by the U.S. Army, but are prevented from doing so due to the site’s neglected condition, Friends of Piney Grove Cemetery said.
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Lawsuit aims to secure cemetery’s future
The cemetery group and its members are represented by a team of Atlanta-based attorneys from Jones Day, a global law firm with a long history of pro bono work and a presence in Atlanta since 1989.
Aside from ongoing cemetery maintenance by the association, the complaint seeks several avenues of relief through the Fulton County Superior Court, including declarations confirming the cemetery’s public status and the easement interests of the descendants of those buried there.
It also aims to permanently bar the association and its affiliates from interfering with the public’s ability to access the cemetery and its burial sites as well as any effort by the plaintiffs to take care of the grounds.
If the plaintiffs win their case, the association could be held liable for trespass and nuisance. The lawsuit seeks unspecified punitive damages, alleging in part that the association is dumping drainage water within the cemetery.
The first hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 14.
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