The Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) and the Enrichmond Foundation will announce a major milestone in our efforts to protect and restore historic Evergreen Cemetery in Richmond on January 21, during a community cleanup event that’s part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service.
Evergreen is the resting place for thousands of individuals who faced segregation, discrimination, and racial violence while contributing in important ways to the city’s — and the nation’s — vibrant social, political, intellectual, and religious life. Among those who rest here are such luminaries as Maggie L. Walker, John Mitchell, Jr., Dr. Sarah Garland Boyd Jones, and Rev. J. Andrew Bowler.
The partnership between VOF and Enrichmond began in 2016, when VOF allocated $400,000 from its Preservation Trust Fund to conserve the cemetery, which had suffered from decades of weeds, trash, vandalism, and neglect despite heroic efforts from volunteers to maintain it. VOF began working with the Enrichmond Foundation, community leaders and volunteers, and people with family buried in the cemetery on a plan to acquire, conserve, and restore the 60-acre site with state support, as well as neighboring East End Cemetery. Enrichmond completed its acquisition of the property in 2017, hired staff devoted to its care, and assembled a team of community leaders and volunteers — most of whom have family buried at the cemeteries — to guide the community engagement and restoration processes.
The cleanup activities will begin at 9am, and a program with speakers and a performance by the Virginia Union University Choir will begin at 11am. Click here for more details about the event, including information about parking, shuttles, a free GRTC bus rides to and from the event.
Please call cemetery caretaker Ted Maris-Wolf at (804) 234-3905 x105 or visit https://enrichmond.org/evergreen-cemetery/. For updates. You can also follow VOF and Enrichmond on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/virginiaoutdoorsfoundation and https://www.facebook.com/EnrichmondFoundation/.
