To access the Oak Grove-Johnston Cemetery, visitors must first drive and park over what are likely unmarked burials.
It’s a small cemetery in the small city of Graham, about 88 miles northwest of Fort Worth on Highway 380, where obsolete oil pumpjacks loom everywhere like rusty dinosaurs. The 102-year-old historic Black cemetery is neatly maintained and has only eight burial markers sitting sparsely inside its white metal gate.
It didn’t always look like this: Just two years ago, the cemetery was even smaller. Large privacy gates encroached on the north and west sides of the property, bushes were overgrown, and heavy machinery was parked over what was once cemetery land…