Cassidy McNeeley

Arts

Memorial event lifts up names of once-forgotten Black women buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery

Last Wednesday (Sept 2.) Rita Steele and her mother, Hilarie Jackson, crammed into the Gilman Chapel at Cedar Grove Cemetery with about 100 other observers and listened closely as the names of 133 Black women interred beneath two vague markers in the burial ground were read out loud. As the 35th name was announced, “Sarah Smith,” the two women cheered.

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