“I could feel the rippling waves of generations of pain with every laden step, bemoaning its deep neglect despite the historical marker.” An examination of a Black cemetery that is losing its essence and heart to time and neglect…
by: Abeni Abeille
It’s natural to feel despondent after visiting a cemetery, a somber place literally filled with death, its invisible eyes peering, telling you that eventually, you’re next. When I went to West Palm Beach’s Evergreen Cemetery (also known as Shalow Memorial Park), the sadness I felt wasn’t the typical melancholy that follows a tranquil, mortality-pondering stroll in a cemetery, the type that feels like a thick blanket in the snow. Instead, this particular sadness sat on my skin in granular dewdrops of jarring unsettlement. It was heavy, and I could feel the heat coming from three separate sources: the sun, the humidity, and some vague specter I couldn’t see, only sense, standing behind me.
Evergreen Cemetery was established in 1916 as a final resting place for the Black/African-American populace of Palm Beach County, FL, just outside of downtown West Palm Beach in the historic Northwood district. The project emerged during a time when segregation applied to all matters of society, down to average causes of death and decedent’s’ final resting places.
Before this cemetery’s nine-acre plot was laid out in 1913 by a group of seven Black trustees and owners, Black citizens were buried in what was known only as the “colored cemetery” on South Dixie Highway, now known as Flamingo Park. Woodlawn Cemetery, West Palm Beach’s flagship cemetery, denied interment of African-Americans until 1966, preceding the legalization of interracial marriage in the United States by one year.
Evergreen, which received its national historical marker in 1987, is home to several notable Black citizens of West Palm Beach, as well as everyday people who shaped its history and culture. Among those interred here are Dr. T. Leroy Jefferson, the city’s first Black physician; J.W. Mickens, an educator; and Henry Speed, a real estate investor, along with numerous WWI and WWII veterans.
Past the gates, the sight that unfolded shattered my initial expectations of comfort in knowing these souls were at rest.
The entire lot looked worse for wear, but with keen awareness of the centuries-long plight of Black people in this country, it’s difficult to place blame on any one person or thing for the neglect. Grass was overgrown or death-brown in many areas, and palm trees burst through several above-ground concrete vaults like Mother Nature’s twisted version of a jack-in-the-box. Some vaults had rotting concrete holes offering a peek into pitch-black darkness. At one point I thought of exploring this, but instead, common sense and a simple “Nah, I’m good” won out. (Trust me, these were not the kinds of spirits you want potentially attaching to you.)
Other vaults had various ghastly superficial defects. One of them, belonging to a couple named John and Amy Collie, had cracks on its surface, suggesting an attempted grave robbery. (By the way, there was more than one vault like this.) I pondered what exactly someone could find in the way of treasure in a crumbling graveyard.
Groundskeeping seemed more an afterthought than a priority, with grass and dirt swallowing gravestones and other monuments. One concrete tile with pastel squares lay before a gravestone that, much like its neighbors, withered by time into a rocky stub. What did it say…?
Hand-carved gravestones punctuated painstaking hours of hardship with streaks of tears. With hands etching names across the concrete slabs, people restored dignity to their dead relatives. I enjoy seeing these types of gravestones, although I couldn’t look at any of them here without feeling wistful.
Many Black veterans who gave their lives for humanity’s collective freedom were buried here. Where exactly they’re buried is a mystery, though, because their gravestones were yanked from the ground and scattered in a strange disarray. For a moment, I pictured myself as the veterans’ relatives trying to pinpoint their original burial site and felt dizzy. I’d bet that they wished they were the ghost prowling about the grounds instead.
If these specific gravestones weren’t decaying with time’s inevitable passage, they were just some morbid dominoes. Either that, or the veterans rise from their eternal sleep at nightfall, shifting the stones aside for an easier entrance above ground, grateful that they no longer need to face the tragedies of the modern world. I like this theory better.
A tool shed stood near the center of the grounds, its door rusted shut with an equally rusted bar barrier. Peering inside revealed equipment and furniture that no one had looked at, let alone touched, in more than a decade. Beyond the equipment, the rest of the shed was pitch black. There were some sad, haunted ghosts hiding in there, and nothing could have convinced me otherwise.
The grass, struggling to thrive, kept score of more than a century of loss in this cemetery’s existence. I could feel the rippling waves of generations of pain with every laden step, bemoaning its deep neglect despite the historical marker.
People still get interred here today, but not many, and it’s not an easy process. A city law was passed in 2013 that allows relatives’ cremains to be buried in family plots. But because the cemetery lacks accurate recordkeeping, many people have been turned away.
Long after I’d left Evergreen, I found myself looking through my photos on my phone for about the fiftieth time, trying to piece together the stories of these former livings: the struggles they endured, the triumphs they saw, even their average days. Even if they carried on with quiet, simple lives, what would they think of how their resting place devolved, if theirs hadn’t miraculously survived the blight?
The cemetery’s sexton, Tony Thomas, maintains the land twice a month in winter and weekly in summer. It’s better than nothing, but will this alone be enough? With the sheer number of graves to cover, total restoration remains a pipe dream. But I hope that within the next few decades, enough people will discover this cemetery and be encouraged to revitalize this sacred ground, one soul at a time. These grounds were evergreen at one point; maybe they can be again.
Abeni Abeille is a nonfiction writer who explores themes such as Black womanhood, identity, fashion, nature, mental health, and the many facets of the human experience. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Her Campus UCF, The Odyssey Online, and Medium. She lives in West Palm Beach, FL. Learn more at beacons.page/abeniabeille.
