Georgia Magazine - September 2024 - 8

GEORGIA News
Compiled by Katie Cowart
Uncovering Penfield's lost history
Last year, the Pitts
Theology Library at
Emory University
in Atlanta, in
collaboration with
Historic Rural
Churches of
Georgia, joined the
ongoing efforts to
clear, restore and
map the cemetery.
Volunteers help to clear the underbrush
and clean the gravestones.
M
amie Hillman, director of the Greene County African
American Museum, stumbled upon a forgotten
chapter of Georgia's past. While exploring the
historic Penfield Cemetery, where many of Mercer University's
founders are buried, Hillman discovered an African American
burial ground just beyond the cemetery's walls in 2019.
Hillman and a friend used a ladder to scale the wall
and were met with a sobering sight: an estimated 1,000 to
1,500 gravestones.
Many of the markers bore the names of formerly enslaved
people and their children, telling the story of a community that
had been neglected and forgotten for decades.
" Cemeteries are important. They are often the only
existing memorials of individuals who were the first folks in our
communities, " Hillman says. " I want to bring attention to the
graves [and] acknowledge that those individuals were and are
significant even to this day. We may never know what plantation
they worked on, but we know now that they did exist. "
A concerted effort began in late 2020 to uncover the
African American section of Penfield Cemetery. Hillman and
the Greene County African American Museum led the initial
clearing and documented many of the known burials on the
museum's website and findagrave.com.
Mercer University partnered with Hillman and the
museum to conduct a detailed scan of the cemetery using
ground-penetrating radar. This noninvasive technique allows
researchers to locate burial sites without disturbing the soil,
helping to map out the cemetery's full extent.
In fall 2022, Spencer Roberts, head of the Chandler School
8 Georgia Magazine September 2024
of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, began holding
monthly clearing days, inviting Georgians to participate.
Volunteers included those with personal ties to Penfield and
others who simply wanted to help reclaim an overlooked piece
of history.
Last year, the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University
in Atlanta, in collaboration with Historic Rural Churches of
Georgia, joined the ongoing efforts to clear, restore and map the
cemetery.
In August, Roberts presented a poster about the project
at the Digital Humanities 2024 (DH24) conference at George
Mason University in Virginia. Digital Humanities is an annual
conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations.
Like most old cemeteries in the South, Penfield Cemetery
was segregated from its inception. The front half was designated
for white graves, while the back half was reserved for African
Americans. In 1948, a wall was erected to divide the two
sections. This barrier made access to the African American
graves difficult. The area was largely abandoned after the last
recorded burial in 1953. The white section of the cemetery
remains active, with burials as recently as 2022.
" It is time that we ... celebrate our own, and in so doing,
celebrate ourselves-our resilience, our traditions that have
gotten us through, and the fact that we are the wildest dreams
of those who came before us, " Hillman says.
While the project has been on a summer hiatus, the
monthly clearing days will resume after the weather cools.
For more information about the Penfield Cemetery project
or to volunteer, visit gcaam.org.
GREENE COUNTY AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM
http://www.findagrave.com http://www.gcaam.org
Georgia Magazine - September 2024

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