The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Evergreen Cemetery designated by UNESCO as “a site of memory.”

Sunday, June 9, 2019

Evergreen Cemetery designated by UNESCO as “a site of memory.”

In some areas of Evergreen Cemetery, families bravely try to beat back the invincible tide of kudzu which threatens to cover the entire cemetery in an impenetrable blanket of green. This is an ongoing process to try and stop the relentless vine from covering their loved ones. Image from 2015.

We've posted in the past about the state of Richmond’s Evergreen Cemetery. A recent development might be more increased help for the cemetery. It has been designated by UNESCO as “a site of memory” to help protect its history. We hope that includes not only increased attention but some money for restoration.

Read the announcement HERE. And read our posting about the state of Evergreen Cemetery from 2015 Here. Also, Selden posted in 2012 about the new grave marker in Evergreen for the editor of the Richmond Planet and early civil rights activist John Mitchell.

Lastly, what can you do to help? Visit this Site created by The Enrichmond Foundation for more information.

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Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.