Baltimore's oldest black cemetery finally gets facelift
The Mount Auburn cemetery, known as 'The City of Dead for Colored People', was founded in 1872, back when blacks could not be interred next to whites...
The Mount Auburn cemetery, known as “The City of Dead for Colored People”, was founded in 1872, back when blacks could not be interred next to whites. More than a century later, the grounds have been unkept and riddled with debris, weeds and garbage. Today inmates work to clear the grounds and restore the cemetery as part of a program to put those serving time to work on meaningful project. The Baltimore Sun has the story:
Five years after burying his father, Samuel W. Moore could no longer find the grave.
That was 1976, and Mount Auburn Cemetery, one of the oldest African-American burial grounds in the country, was overcome with stickerbushes, weeds and garbage — a fate unbecoming the scores of people buried there who were pioneers of Baltimore’s black community.
After decades of neglect, interrupted occasionally by well-meaning but ultimately fruitless cleanup efforts, the cemetery in South Baltimore was officially rededicated Monday, due in large part to the labors of an unlikely group: state prison inmates.
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