Evergreen Cemetery (Richmond, Virginia)
Encyclopedia
East End (Richmond, Virginia)
The East End of Richmond, Virginia is the quadrant of the City of Richmond, Virginia, and more loosely the Richmond metropolitan area, east of the downtown.-Geographic boundaries:...
of Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
, dating from 1891. Notable African-American Richmonders including Maggie L. Walker
Maggie L. Walker
Maggie Lena Walker was an African American teacher and businesswoman. Walker was the first African American female bank president and the first woman to charter a bank in the United States. As a leader, she achieved successes with the vision to make tangible improvements in the way of life for...
, John Mitchell, Jr., A.D.Price, and Rev.J.Andrew Bowler are buried there.
The most recent burial in the historic section of the cemetery dates from the 1980s. Much of the privately-owned cemetery is completely overgrown with kudzu
Kudzu
Kudzu is a plant in the genus Pueraria in the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. It is a climbing, coiling, and trailing vine native to southern Japan and southeast China. Its name comes from the Japanese name for the plant, . It is a weed that climbs over trees or shrubs and grows so...
or is returning to forest. The original organization responsible for the cemetery, the Evergreen Cemetery Association, made no allowances for perpetual care in its charter. In 1970, the association sold its more than 5,000 plots to Metropolitan Memorial Services, which soon went bankrupt. A group of black funeral-home directors later bought the site at auction.
External links
- Evergreen Cemetery Families and Friends
- Evergreen Cemetery (Richmond, Virginia) Flickr Group
- Evergreen Cemetery on Historic Cemeteries
In the Media
- Evergreen-related posts on Church Hill People's News
- Cemetery for Richmond’s prominent blacks suffers (Richmond Times-Dispatch Mar.2, 2007)
- Williams: Let’s right sad state of cemeteries (Richmond Times-Dispatch Aug.1, 2009)
- Neglected cemetery being reclaimed (Richmond Times-Dispatch Nov.8, 2009)