Washtenaw County’s only known historic Black cemetery is moving into a new phase of restoration, with volunteers set to learn how to clean, repair and reset sunken headstones at Woodlawn Cemetery in Ypsilanti Township this October. The training events, scheduled from noon to 4 p.m. on October 10 and October 17, come after local organizations and hundreds of volunteers have spent years clearing the overgrown, long-neglected burial ground at 7800 S. Huron River Drive.
According to MLive, volunteers will be taught to safely assess, lift and reset grave markers on their bases, and to mark and clean known headstones. Melanie Purkis, who owns Purkis Cemetery Preservation, will conduct the training, and attendees are encouraged to register online in advance. The workshops are also expected to be filmed for a documentary that will include interviews with descendants of people interred at the cemetery.
Six Decades of Neglect
Pastor Garther Roberson, who served as pastor of Ypsilanti’s Second Baptist Church, founded Woodlawn Cemetery in 1946 after purchasing a plot of land at a time when other cemeteries refused to bury people of color, per MLive’s reporting. The cemetery was established to provide Black community members a resting place amid discrimination and racism, according to the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County.
That organization has spearheaded the restoration project, which it says has been propelled by more than 300 dedicated volunteers. The cemetery went unmaintained starting in 1965, according to a separate mlive.com report, allowing trees and vegetation to grow up and bury or damage many gravestones over the roughly 60 years that followed.
Records Lost, Numbers Still Uncertain
Cemetery records were lost in a garage fire in the 1960s, MLive reports, and a cemetery shed that might have held additional documentation later collapsed. Genealogists continue to gather histories of the people interred there, piecing together what the fire destroyed…