Care for historic Black cemeteries in Hampton Roads depends on the locality. But city support can make a difference.

Across Hampton Roads, historic Black cemeteries are filled with some of the most important members of the region’s history. But how well their graves are treated depends on what jurisdiction they fall under.

Some cemeteries are privately owned or abandoned and left in the hands of volunteer groups. With inconsistent funding and workers, upkeep can end up hit or miss.

Others land in cities that take responsibility for their maintenance. City-owned cemeteries can still be flooded with preservation problems but end up with consistent, perpetual care.

Virginia Beach, Suffolk and Hampton don’t take ownership of any historic Black cemeteries. Chesapeake is in the process of assessing historic cemeteries in the city. Portsmouth owns Mount Calvary Complex, a cluster of four historic Black cemeteries, and is in the process of acquiring another, Lincoln Memorial Cemetery.

Norfolk’s cemeteries department declined to comment, city spokesperson Carter Johnson wrote in an email.

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Fighting on their own

Darnell Lang spends three days, twice a month dodging sunken graves on a donated lawn mower in Pleasant Shade Cemetery in Hampton. He started cutting the 17 acres with a troop of volunteers 14 years ago, but numbers have dwindled.

Now he mostly cuts in solitude.

“I’m old myself,” said Darnell, a 68-year-old retired minister. “I try to do the best I can to manage, but it’s hard.”

Pleasant Shade is a historic Black cemetery in Hampton, which doesn’t own or care for historical cemeteries. Darnell and his wife, Artestine Lang, took up the cemetery’s care with their community organization, East End Neighborhood Association of the Peninsula.

While tending to her own family graves, Artestine watched the upkeep of the cemetery deteriorate over the years as families who cared for individual graves died off or relocated.

She used her organization to rally volunteer groups to maintain the graveyard.

When they began cutting the grass, some of the weeds stood over 6-feet tall, she said. It took four passes with weed wackers and lawnmowers to get the grass to a reasonable height.

Even with volunteers, there are things Artestine can’t do on her own.

Volunteers can’t get to tombstones trapped behind a treeline bordering Pleasant Shade Cemetery.

Some tombstones have crumbled and some graves have collapsed into gaping holes.

Artestine believes without funding or city intervention, these problems will go unfixed.

After 14 years caring for the cemetery, Artestine has seen the number of volunteers and donations ebb to a trickle.

“A lot of the older people who were supporting us passed away,” Artestine said.

Artestine and her husband are getting on in their years. Walking difficulties have stopped Lang from joining in the lawnwork.

Without anyone to take up the mantle, Artestine hopes the city will eventually take over the cemetery.

Hampton doesn’t take ownership of historic cemeteries, Hampton History Museum Executive Director Luci Cochran said.

“All cemeteries in Hampton are private property,” she said. “So the city really cannot or does not have authority to have people work on private property.”

The city gaining control of a cemetery can also be a struggle, Cochran said. Sometimes the owner can’t be identified, taxes are owed on the property or the property doesn’t have any value.

Artestine Lang is still trying to speak with city officials about how that can change.

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City support

Where cities take ownership of their cemeteries, care can be more consistent.

Charles Johnson has been visiting his family’s plot in Portsmouth’s Mount Calvary cemetery since the 1960s.

His family made a celebration out of cleaning the plot every year. Generations from across Hampton Roads drove there to eat lunch, sing hymns and share family history. They painted concrete tombstones white so they would resemble marble, once a common practice in African American cemeteries, Johnson said.

“This was the park where we ate lunch,” he said. “We came for Memorial Day parades.”

Johnson’s ancestor, Edwin Mingo, established his family plot in a coveted spot of the cemetery in the 1880s. That lane of the cemetery was reserved for high-rolling members of the community, Johnson said. Mingo was a professional and minister, but far from upper class. He wanted his family plot to stand alongside the legends, so most of the adornments were scavenged.

Embedded in the tombstones are knobs from decommissioned electrical knob-and-tube wiring systems. The low gate around the plot is topped with white marble door knobs Mingo snagged from a demolished house. Concrete flower pots are trimmed with car headlight rims. With enough shine, they can look like silver, Johnson said.

Johnson watched the cemetery change around him as he grew, from an overgrown field with a few winding paths leading to an abandoned lot with weeds reaching over 5-feet tall.

Wrought iron gates separating family plots and delicate urns disappeared and popped up in antique stores throughout Hampton Roads. The construction of Interstate 264 turned the cemetery into a lake in the wet seasons. Concrete tombstones crumbled and graves sunk under the weight of time.

In 1964, Portsmouth ruled that Mount Calvary Complex was unfit for new burials, relegating it to a historic site, Johnson said.

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Johnson saw tombstones topple and shatter overnight, acts of racial vandalism from the surrounding white community in backlash to the civil rights movement.

Volunteer groups sporadically cleared the grounds, but there was no one there to provide continuous care, Johnson said.

Johnson joined the African American Historical Society of Portsmouth in their fight to get the cemetery complex recognized and taken care of by the city. In 2010, the society commissioned a preservation assessment detailing the maintenance needs of the cemetery, including major issues with flooding and tree maintenance.

In 2019, Portsmouth took over responsibility for maintenance of the grounds.

Since then, Johnson has seen the cemetery flourish again.

Instead of a large family gathering, now he brings his 21-year-old daughter to his family plot every year. The grass stays cut and dead trees get removed by the city. Johnson still finds shattered tombstones that need replacing. But now he’s able to walk along the lanes with ease, instead of having to wade through weeds to reach his family plot.

Portsmouth spends about $12,250 per cutting cycle to care for all of their public cemeteries, including Mount Calvary Complex, city spokesperson Dana Woodson wrote in an email. The city also allocates $50,000 a year on repairs to fencing, headstones and the grounds.

However, just because the city is mowing the grass doesn’t mean there isn’t more work to be done. Mount Calvary Complex was deemed one of the most endangered historic sites in Virginia last year. The complex has battled flooding issues for decades, with little help from the city.

Portsmouth is in the process of taking ownership of another historic Black graveyard, Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. The owner is giving the plot to the city. The cemetery has similar drainage problems to Mount Calvary.

Portsmouth has had public cemeteries for centuries, maintained by the city and funded with public money, Councilman Mark Whitaker said. Originally, these were all white cemeteries.

“You had African Americans having to pay out of their private dollars to take the cemetery perpetual care,” Whitaker said.

Whitaker said city maintenance of historic Black cemeteries is tied into social justice.

“What has occurred at Lincoln is just a microcosm of the neglect that the African American community not only in Portsmouth, but we’ve seen nationwide,” Whitaker said.

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Finding the funds

Every historic Black cemetery, city-owned or not, struggles to find funding for the upkeep of aging graves.

In 2020, the state started helping to fund the upkeep of graves dug before 1900. This year, the state has put aside $250,000 for graves dug before 1948. Recipients get $5 per grave.

Charitable organizations and cities can apply for the funding by proving the grave’s age with tombstones or death certificates.

Many of Hampton Roads’ representatives sponsored the bill, including Dels. Jackie Glass of Norfolk, Deion Ward of Hampton and Clinton Jenkins of Suffolk.

“It is unclear how (many) cemeteries this will affect, but we must make the opportunity known,” Glass wrote in an email.

Across Hampton Roads, one organization took advantage of this fund last year, Barrett-Peake Heritage Foundation, in their maintenance of Barrett and Elmerton cemeteries in Hampton. The city of Hampton matches the funds the foundation gets from the state.

Artestine Lang hadn’t learned about the state funding until recently. She hopes this will help, but mapping the age of every grave in Pleasant Shade Cemetery is no small effort. Lang will still ask for Hampton support as the cemetery sinks below her feet.

“Apparently it’s not something that they do,” Lang said. “As we age and we get older, people drop off. I hope and pray that eventually somebody will come up with a law where they can try to make a change.”