Some HISD students have been busy cleaning up a historic Fifth Ward cemetery:
Almost three dozen students from HISD’s Wheatley High School (4900 Market Street) have been honoring their neighborhood’s rich heritage over the past few months by rolling up their sleeves and applying some elbow grease.
The students–many of whom graduated this May–joined forces with representatives from the Houston Geological Society, the Fifth Ward Enrichment Center, Keep Houston Beautiful, and Project Respect to give the old Evergreen Negro Cemetery in Houston’s historic Fifth Ward (located just east of downtown) a facelift.
Over the course of several Saturday-morning sessions, the students have partially erected a wooden fence to prevent drive-by trash dumping, trimmed and manicured overgrown trees and shrubs, and mowed the grass that periodically covers and obscures many of the gravestones–one dating back to the early 1800’s.
“This area has a long history,” explained Fifth Ward Enrichment Project Manager Charles Williams, “and we wanted students to be a part of the clean-up effort and take pride in that. Many of the headstones have chain links carved into them to show which people were slaves when they died, and some students even have relatives buried here.”
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The Evergreen Negro Cemetery, which is the final resting place of slaves, freedmen, buffalo soldiers, and African-American veterans from virtually every American war, is located on the site of an old cotton plantation. It is bordered by Calles Street to the west, Sakowitz Street to the east, Market Street to the south, and the businesses on the south side of Interstate 10-East to the north. The cemetery is also bisected by Lockwood Street, which runs north-south and divides the graveyard into eastern and western sections near its center. Preliminary research indicates the original 20-acre site may have once extended north of I-10.
