Their souls may have moved on to a better place, but the final resting site for their bodies are buried six feet under the grounds of a cemetery that rests idly between two busy Baton Rouge thoroughfares like a forgotten city of the dead.
The Sweet Olive Cemetery was the first burial grounds incorporated in the city limits for African-Americans, but like the hundreds of bodies buried beneath its hallowed soil, the graveyard itself has begun to decompose from years of neglect and disservice.
“The cemetery just got terrible,” said Matt Keller, a volunteer with the Mid-City Redevelopment Alliance, a local non-profit organization that hosts events for organizations seeking to rebuild area communities. “It’s in the inner city and people do care about it, but people don’t do a lot.”
According to W.T. Winfield, president of the Sweet Olive Cemetery Board, the graveyard’s current state of disarray was due to a lack of funds and manpower needed to properly sustain a burial site.
“The families that have buried loved ones there have never come together with sustainable funds for its upkeep,” Winfield said.
The cemetery is sandwiched between North Boulevard and Government Street overlooking two major intersections to its left and right.
According to Winfield, the cemetery was owned and maintained jointly by two benevolent societies-the Sons and Daughters of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church and Mount Zion Baptist Church.
In an email, Winfield said the relationship between the two groups “was not always a harmonious (one). On record there were several disputes between the societies until 1975.”
In 1974, Winfield said the Sweet Olive Cemetery Association was formed after constant urging from Mr. and Mrs. Fred C. Matthews. One year later, the association received recognition as a nonprofit organization by the Louisiana Cemetery Board.
“He (Fred Matthews) maintained it for 25 years,” Winfield said. After his death, at the age of 99, “The Sweet Olive Board volunteered to continue in Mr. Matthew’s absence.”
The graveyard was later dedicated to Matthews in April of 2005 in honor of his long-standing service and dedication to the cemetery.
But just like its’ caretaker for more than 20 years, Winfield said the board suffered with a lack of funding making the graveyard’s upkeep problematic.
Soon the sacred ground was overcome by errant shrubbery and the concrete tombs became discolored and stained with mildew.
But like a phoenix arising from its own flames, Baton Rouge’s first black cemetery is getting a chance to breathe again thanks to the students of Southern and Louisiana State University.
“The Sweet Olive project is actually put on by the LSU Honors College,” said Laura Springer, a sophomore English major at LSU and membership director for the university’s College Republicans.
Springer said the Honors College was seeking involvement from other university organizations when they reached out to Anthony Monroe, president of Southern’s College Republicans.
“Anthony was at one of our meetings when I announced it,” Springer said. “He came up afterwards and said he was interested.”
Monroe said with his organization having such low numbers, he felt it would be a great opportunity for SU campus organizations to be involved in something significant.
“I thought this would be a great opportunity to collaborate with LSU in a good way, other than a party,” Monroe said. “You think graveyard, dead people, but you don’t realize how much you have to do for them because they’re dead.”
Volunteers from both universities spent two Saturdays, one in September and another in January, working diligently aside one another to rejuvenate the gravesite that had begun to look as rotted and decayed as the occupants of its exposed tombs.
“It was literally dead,” Monroe said. “I couldn’t believe that people were actually buried there. Caskets were open (and) graves were sunken in.”
Both Monroe and Springer, who had previously never heard of Sweet Olive, said they suffered from breakouts of poison ivy after hours of treading through the thick patches of grass.
“So many people got poison ivy,” Springer said. But despite the outbreak, she said, “It made such a huge difference. We were privileged to be able to help like that.”
Keller said the Sweet Olive project is an on-going program that’s not limited to just Southern and LSU students.
“We’ve been coordinating different groups and have logged in well over a thousand hours,” he said. “It looks like a real cemetery now.”
Winfield said the board is humbly appreciative of the volunteered hours the students of the city’s two premier institutions of higher education have put into the historic site.
“These students have shown through physical labor and mental consciousness that they are aware of the heritage of their forefathers who are at rest at Sweet Olive,” he said.
Keller said every time there has been a LSU group at the graveyard site, a group from Southern hasn’t been far behind.
On having the opportunity to work alongside SU students, Springer said, “I was really impressed they came in full force like that. I don’t think the two universities do enough together.”
Monroe said, “It was great to see that many white students at the oldest African-American graveyard working just as diligently as we were.
“We don’t know each other,” he said. “But both group of students are there for one cause.”
According to representatives from both universities, and the Mid-City Redevelopment Alliance, plans are underway for the schools to return to Sweet Olive in the near future.
“I had to put forth effort,” said Valeria Williams, a senior political science major from Cottonport and president of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc. “After I did it, I felt better. I had made a difference and did something worth getting recognition for.”
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Gone, but not forgotten
February 9, 2007
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