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Pajka’s Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe
Sharon Pajka, the prolific Richmond-region author and cemetery friend, releases a new book today. Titled The Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe, it has an inviting cover photograph of the Allan grave markers in Shockoe Hill Cemetery. Sharon explains: “My book includes a collection of thirty-seven memorials, nineteen cemeteries and five states, plus Washington, D.C.…
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East End/Evergreen Cemeteries Community Conversation
The wheels of justice are still turning slowly for the Enrichmond Foundation’s accountability following its mismanagement of Evergreen Cemetery, East End Cemetery, and broader community relations. In the first half of 2023, various news outlets have reported that the fiscal agent is apparently under investigation by the FBI and the Virginia state attorney general’s office.…
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Liberty and Death and conservation in St. John’s Churchyard
On Thursday, May 25, at 7:00pm, I will be delivering a talk at St. John’s Church for the Historic St. John’s Church Foundation’s Walter W. Craigie Speaker Series. Titled, “Liberty and Death in St. John’s Churchyard,” the talk will offer an overview of the history of the churchyard, which is the oldest surviving burial ground…
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Woodland Cemetery open house
These are exciting days for Woodland Cemetery. Descendants and volunteers there have transformed the site under the leadership of the Woodland Restoration Foundation, with bigger plans to come. They invite the public to celebrate with them and learn more at a family-friendly open house to be held at the cemetery on Saturday, May 20, starting…
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Slavery, Shockoe Hill, and MCV
In December 2022, historian Peter J. Wosh completed his study of the historical ties between the Medical College of Virginia and slavery. Wosh’s report was commissioned by VCU administrators in accordance with Virginia House Bill 1980, and it is well worth a read. Wosh made use of a great deal of archival evidence, despite the…
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Where Evergreen/East End are heading
The pressure continues to build for the city to clean up the mess left behind by the Enrichmond Foundation at Evergreen Cemetery and East End Cemetery, which together make up 76 acres of African American graves along the city/county line. On February 13, 2023, city council members Cynthia Newbille and Anne-Frances Lambert introduced a resolution…
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$16 million from Mellon
On December 20, 2022, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney announced that the city had received an $11 million grant from the Mellon Foundation via its Monuments Project for the Shockoe heritage campus interpretive center. This award was part of a larger $16 million package from the Foundation’s Monuments Project aimed at Richmond’s revised monumental landscape. The…
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RIP Representative McEachin
I was saddened to hear of the death of Congressman A. Donald McEachin on November 28. In my own most recent experience with Rep. McEachin, he was talking with the local African American descendant community about his co-sponsored African American Burial Grounds Preservation Program bill. Around that same time, he had issued a letter to…
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Battlefield Park Road Cemetery
Today new signage was unveiled at the Battlefield Park Road Cemetery in eastern Henrico County. This is not the nearby Fort Harrison National Cemetery, but a private family cemetery, listed in the “Henrico County Cemeteries” study as the Harris-Lawrence-Jackson Cemetery. It is located at 7921 Battlefield Park Road in Varina for those looking to visit.…
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VCU’s Apology
On September 16, 2022, Virginia Commonwealth University’s board of visitors approved a resolution apologizing for the 1968 heart transplant episode in which Bruce Tucker’s live heart was taken without his and his family’s consent at the Medical College of Virginia’s hospital. The resolution also acknowledges and regrets the earlier practice of targeting Black graves to…