Thousands of free and enslaved Black individuals buried in unmarked graves at a Louisville cemetery were honored this weekend.
Thousands of free and enslaved Black individuals buried in unmarked graves at a Louisville cemetery have been honored.
WLKY reports that the ceremony took place during Black History Month at Saint Louis Cemetery in Tyler Park, four years after the unmarked graves were discovered during research conducted by a local deacon. It is part of the ‘Saint Louis Cemetery East Slope Project,’ which seeks to identify and mark the unmarked graves.
“They don’t have markers to show that they were here, that they lived and that they mattered, and so this event is a way of correcting that and giving voice to those identities by saying their names,” said Ned Berghausen, a deacon at St. Agnes Catholic Church.
It took decades for some families to afford permanent markers. The only record of those buried was kept in a burial book at the cemetery office. Now, the names have been transferred to a digital database to ensure they are not forgotten.
“Immediately after emancipation, most of the first generation did not have much wealth accumulated,” explained Berghausen, who organized the Saint Louis Cemetery Project. “As enslaved people, their labor had been taken from them without compensation, and so they did not have money for markers.”
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Source: Black Enterprise
