Suit vs. changes at black S.I. cemetery
FOR NEARLY 83 years, two red-brick pillars supporting a wrought-iron fence flanked the entrance of Frederick Douglass Memorial Park Inc., a cemetery on Staten Island for AfricanAmericans during decades of segregation. A stately black sign fastened to the southeastern pillar bore the name of the burial ground in bold, white script — which, to those whose loved ones are buried there, served as a befitting marker.
Today, the sign has been replaced by a glossy placard, and the bricks are heaped in a green metal waste removal bin near the cemetery’s new, shiny, black fence.
According to some plot owners whose family members are buried at Frederick Douglass in Oakwood, the decision to tear down the historic entryway was grounds for a lawsuit — the final straw, they say, in a long string of grievances against those entrusted with the property.
“There are two symbols to this cemetery, the gate and the sign,” said Patricia Willis, CEO of the nonprofit organization Friends of Frederick Douglass Memorial Park Inc., who filed the suit Thursday against Lynn Rogers, who oversees the grounds.
According to the suit, Willis is calling on Rogers and those working for her to stop “any further demolition, construction and/or removal or desecration of any property” in the cemetery, and to safeguard the bricks, sign and iron gate removed this month.
To Rogers, the additions are a major improvement. The pillars that previously cascaded into a low-slung wall — bricks first laid in 1935, when Harlem-based funeral director Rodney Dade founded the park — needed a mason’s touch. Its crumbling mortar needed repointing. The wrought-iron gate had rusted. Decades of neglect led to a state of disrepair.
To Willis, however, the new features are a slap in the face.
“People were crying when they saw (the gate) was gone,” said Willis, 65, whose parents are buried there. “They’re not understanding how it got here, why it's where, what this meant to black people."
“It’s hard to look at,” she said on a recent Friday, her gaze passing from the polished metal fence to the mound of bricks and mortar.
“I don’t want this to get ugly. I just want the gate back.” *** In 1934, Rodney Dade dreamed of obtaining land where he could properly bury AfricanAmericans — who, even in death, were segregated in “white” cemeteries. With the help of Benjamin Diamond, a well-known New York business consultant, and lawyer Frederick Bunn, Dade incorporated 53 acres of land. By June 1935, they founded the cemetery.
The grounds — which later dwindled down to 17 acres — would become a final resting place for Elias Bryant, star outfielder in the Negro League; blues singers Mamie Smith and Rosa Henderson; Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew, founder of a Black Hebrew congregation; jazz musician C. Luckeyth (Luckey) Roberts, and Eleanor Bumpurs, who, in 1984, was infamously shot and killed by police.
They named the cemetery after famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who isn’t buried there but whose spirit is felt from a centrally located cenotaph, dedicated in his honor.
But by the mid-1990s, the place had deteriorated. Dade and members of the founding board of directors had died, and rumors began to swirl that those in charge were pocketing cash allocated for the burial site.
According to court records, in February 2005, the state attorney general’s office ordered then-director Dorothea Morton King to step down and pay $667,593 in damages. It was determined in Manhattan Supreme Court that the property would enter receivership, and the court appointed Arthur Friedman as the cemetery’s first receiver, a custodial guardian of its grounds and assets.
Friedman, however, would prove to be a disappointment and was removed in 2011. He and his wife, Ilana Friedman, pleaded guilty to second-degree larceny for siphoning more than $850,000 in cash from another Staten Island burial ground, United Hebrew Cemetery, and, according to court records, consequently lost receivership of Frederick Douglass.
Willis alleges that Dominick Tarantino, who was appointed receiver after Friedman, let the property fall into further disrepair. On a recent tour of the grounds, she pointed out sunken graves, headstones displaced by wayward tree roots, puddles of water from backed-up drains, and deep dips in the lawn, all of which are listed in her lawsuit.
Rogers, who is also executive director of Friends of Abandoned Cemeteries and was named receiver of Frederick Douglass in