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Construction on Historic Cemetery? PDF Print E-mail
Written by DeadGirl   
Thursday, 26 May 2005
Dianne Derby May 25, 2005
A slave cemetery desecrated? That’s the accusation coming from several concerned neighbors in MacIntosh County. They say developers who are building near the cemetery are potentially building on top of, or destroying, hundreds of graves.

In some cases, headstones are just yards away from homeowners’ property lines.

And now, angry neighbors and descendents have gotten both the city and the county involved in a bid to put the construction on hold.

"To say there are 100 burials is a conservative estimate.” Mattie Gladstone has been mapping out cemeteries in MacIntosh County for more than a decade. She says the Kell’s Grove Cemetery in Darien was originally a slave cemetery that now may be bulldozed over by developers, something she says needs to be prevented.

"The property does not belong to the landowner around it; it belongs to the people who are buried here so when they encroach on the cemetery they are encroaching on someone else's land.”

Eunice Moore has strong ties to this cemetery. She says her ancestors were buried here and now she’s worried construction on the site at Kell’s Landing will desecrate the graves of her loved ones. "We do not mind them building out home but we do not want them building on our ancestors.”

Sadie Collins says she has four family members buried in the cemetery. "I'm sad and I'm angry about it because something need to be done we need justice we go through too much and I don't think we should go through this anymore.”

Construction has already begun here on parts of the property but an injunction issued on Monday put an end to it at least until the city can figure out whether or not this is a burial ground.

County Commissioner Charles Jordan was the push behind the injunction. He says he asked the city’s building inspector to help put the construction on hold. “I feel that they more or less that they should rest in peace and we should not disturb the body."

It’s something several concerned community members echo.

"If history of African-American slaves are done away with or disappear we have nothing to show our existence," explains Karen Clark

We tried to contact the developers and the owners of the land but they did not return our calls.

We also tried to ask the city’s building inspector about the construction, but he refused to talk to us.

There are three main laws that protect burials from disturbance in Georgia:

The first says human remains and burial objects are the property of the state, not the property owner.

The second says anyone who accidently or inadvertently discovers or exposes human remains must notify police.

And the third says it is against the law to remove a dead body from a grave or disturb the contents of a burial site.

Source: WSAV.COM
 
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