HILLSDALE, Mo. — A group of young people spent a few hours restoring a historic cemetery in St. Louis County on Saturday.
The Missouri Botanical Garden's Outdoor Youth Corps has met for the past couple of weekends to breathe life back into the historic Greenway Cemetery in Hillsdale, Missouri.
The youth corps planted a new grove of native trees and bushes on the grounds that has seen a major transformation in recent years. The land at 6571 St. Louis Avenue was once unkempt and used for illegal dumping.
“We were here two weeks ago. We removed honeysuckle for this entire area. It's completely overrun,” said Rilee Poirot as she mulched and prepped the ground for the tree planting.
The young gardeners have power-drilled stiff soil, and community development organization Beyond Housing has supplied the much-needed water, an essential given that the property has no water.
Greenway is the first non-denominational commercial cemetery for African-Americans in the St. Louis area, established in 1874 by Herman Krueger.
Krueger had run another cemetery for nearly 20 years when he purchased 10 acres of land off Hamburger Avenue, which is now St. Louis Avenue. He established Greenwood Cemetery specifically for the burial of Black people, according to the Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association.
Harriet Scott is one of the hundreds of people buried at the cemetery. Scott and her husband, Dred Scott, sued for their freedom in Missouri. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against their family in what has been called one of the worst Court rulings in U.S. history.
"It's just very important and very big for the community for this to be done,” Poirot said.
The cleanup and beautification include a lot of landscaping.
"We have planted a living amenity to honor the souls and the lives of the over 50,000 Black St. Louisans who are buried here,” said Jean Ponzi, Green Resources Manager at the Missouri Botanical Garden's EarthWays Center.
Ponzi expressed that cemeteries have traditionally been places of refuge in cities and green spaces for people to enjoy and remember their loved ones.
“Greenwood being the oldest non-sectarian cemetery has been that for the Black community for a long time,” Ponzi added.
In 2015 when the work started, the headstones in the cemetery were not visible.
That was until Shelly Morris and her husband Rafael formed the Greenwood Preservation Society and stepped in to clear weeds and illegal dumping on the 32 acres.
"The cemetery had laid abandoned for a minimum of three decades and when we started volunteering we really just saw the need,” Morris said.
Every initiative to beautify and upkeep the land is personal for the couple.
“We have family buried here as well but we knew that others couldn't visit their loved ones at that time as well,” Morris added.
“I really love coming out and doing this stuff. It's very good for my soul,” Poirot said.
“It is many hands, many hearts, bringing biodiversity native plants to Greenwood Cemetery,” Ponzi said.
Beyond Housing will continue to keep the trees watered through the growing season.
Greenwood Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 26, 2004.