When a past is buried and the ground grown over, you don’t get to choose what you have to pull back to reveal it again. You dig into what’s there. For the past year, Brian Palmer and Erin Hollaway Palmer have been tearing up brambles, English ivy, privet, invasive sumac, and more to uncover and restore the dignity of the graves of Richmonders in two long-neglected African-American cemeteries.
The couple — both journalists who have taught as adjuncts in UR’s journalism department — began nosing around Richmond’s cemeteries to get footage for a documentary about the cemetery in York County, Va., where Brian’s great-grandfather is buried. It is on land that is now part of Camp Peary and largely inaccessible.
In Richmond, they found themselves in African-American cemeteries rendered nearly invisible by neglect — toppled headstones buried under overgrown foliage, dumped tires, and more. But the Palmers also found a small but dogged group of volunteers unearthing and restoring dignity to one such sacred space, East End Cemetery. The couple now spends nearly every free Saturday out there with them. Brian often pulls out his camera.
It’s easy to feel outrage, he said, but through his lens, he is documenting something additional: “Community. I know it’s crazy to think about that in a cemetery, but there is beauty there. I wanted to find that.”