Meeting those trying to save Black cemetery
Group of volunteers works to bring respect to once-abandoned historic graveyard along West Dallas Street, but they could use some help
I didn’t mean to offend when I wrote that College Memorial Park Cemetery, the historic graveyard where Jack Yates and other Black leaders are buried, was in disrepair and being used by nearby residents as a de facto dog park.
My column in December drew a tremendous response from readers who wanted to help. But that’s not how it was received by the group of volunteers who have been working for many years to keep up the 5-acre cemetery along West Dallas Street,
between Shepherd and Dunlavy.
The fate of the cemetery has been in their hands, literally. They have been pulling weeds, mowing grass, picking up trash and trying to give the burial ground the respect it deserves. Most of them
have no ties to the cemetery other than empathetic heartstrings that tether them to the mission to save this place.
Mark McKinnon, a landscape architect, has been leading the volunteer and preservation efforts as president of the College Park Cemetery
Association. He wrote me shortly after my column ran to let me know that some 30 volunteers, including a group of Boy Scouts, were at the cemetery that day and discussed what I wrote as they filled several dumpsters with trash and debris.
They felt unappreciated, an unintended consequence as I urged leaders in the community to make plans for the cemetery’s future and secure funding to maintain it.
Communication can go amiss sometimes.
When I first visited the cemetery last fall, I was shocked to watch nearby residents let their dogs roam the grounds off-leash and urinate on gravesites. I wondered how a place with such history — where Yates and John Sessum Jr., the first African American member of the Houston Light Guard, are buried — had little regard in
the community.
In January, I went back to the cemetery to meet McKinnon and some dozen volunteers. Like Cassandra Iku, development manager for SheSpace, who had no blood connection to anyone buried at the cemetery but said she felt a sense of responsibility to do what should could to ensure that those buried there were not forgotten.
“It was so emotional coming here. This is really a special place that we have to preserve and respect,” she said.
I also met Randy Riepe who initiated the volunteer effort for the cemetery after running across it in 2006 when it was completely overtaken by weeds.
Riepe says it was the holy spirit that led him to jog along West Dallas Street instead of his usual path on Allen Parkway. He passed what looked like a vacant overgrown lot ready for a developer to scoop up but noticed the top of a Texas historical marker in the distance.
Riepe, a retired geophysicist in oil and gas exploration, read the sign and learned that the unkempt lot was College Memorial Park Cemetery, one of Houston’s three remaining Black cemeteries where former enslaved and freedmen and women who lived mostly in Fourth Ward were buried.
“You’d see the corner of a headstone as we were ripping out the weeds, and you could see that someone is buried there,” he said. “I wanted to learn more, then it became this mission to preserve this special place. It’s embarrassing the previous owners abandoned it, and their interest had nothing to do with respectful care of the people buried there.”
The cemetery was founded in 1896 and named for Houston College, which was across the street. In the 1920s, the city put a sewage line down the middle of the property. The owners, who were white, then split it from 10 acres to 5 acres in a legal battle and carelessly
moved some gravesite markers.
By the time Riepe discovered the cemetery, it was owned by Bethel Baptist Church, which acquired it in 1998 and became its first Black owner. The church struggled to take care of it, often enlisting youth who needed to complete community service hours for their probation.
It took the volunteers almost a year to get it under control. Riepe later recruited McKinnon, whose expertise in landscape architecture was invaluable, and formed the College Park Cemetery Association in 2010 to organize efforts, such as cleanups and raising funds for preservation.
While people can no longer be buried at College Memorial Park, McKinnon created a prayer garden in the far corner of the cemetery to serve as a
depository for ashes and a way to generate revenue for preservation. The remains of McKinnon’s mother are already there. She is the first white person
laid to rest at the cemetery.
“It’s so unfortunate that so many people had the mindset that the Black people buried here were not real people,” said
Riepe, who also wants to be buried there.
The association pays for pet waste stations often ignored by dog owners who fail to follow the city’s leash law. With so much debris removal monthly, including the belongings of homeless people who sometimes camp there at night, the cemetery could use a city trash bin and the service that goes with it. There are also a dozen or so dead trees that need to be removed. These are just a few things on a long list of needs.
This story of historic Black cemeteries in dire need of preservation help isn’t new. It’s happening across the country, with too few efforts to save them.
Too few people, like McKinnon, Riepe and the other volunteers I met that day, have the heart to fight for them.