Willie Hudspeth had not set foot on the grounds of St. John’s Cemetery in nearly two years. The cemetery – in Pilot Point in northern Denton County – began in the late 1890s as a burial ground for formerly enslaved people.
Hudspeth, 80, shook his head in disbelief at the evidence of neglect he saw when he gained access to the property on a Saturday morning in May.
Property owners surrounding the cemetery allowed Hudspeth, a group of descendants of those buried there and members of the St. John’s Cemetery Association, formed to maintain and research the 1.5-acre cemetery, on the property that morning…