On the southern edge of Atlanta, red clay settles into quiet hills, and magnolia trees stretch toward the sun. South-View Cemetery rests like a long, unfinished sentence. Not silent, nor asleep. It listens. It remembers. Beneath its grass and stone lies a community that refused to disappear. Here, the dead become the storytellers about the living.
South-View was born in a time when African Americans were denied dignity even in their final moments. In the late 19th century, Atlanta’s cemeteries reflected the rigid color lines of the city itself. Black bodies were placed in distant corners. Funerals entered through the back gates. Graves were marked poorly, if at all. Even in death, segregation ruled.
Yet within this narrow space of restriction, imagination took root…