Anna Rinaggio, Campus Carrier copy editor

This summer, Berry received a $50,000 grant from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund program to aid in the preservation of two historically African American cemeteries on campus. Throughout the upcoming school year, these funds will go toward hiring a cultural restoration firm that can survey the land at the Freemantown and Shelton Family settlements — located on Mountain Campus — and developing a preservation plan based on that data.

According to Rachel McLucas, director of Oak Hill and the Martha Berry Museum, the Berry Schools first acquired these sites separately from the Freeman and Shelton families in the 1920s. This was the land the respective families lived on, and now, 100 years later, the cemeteries are all that’s left in the physical space. As the owner of the land, Berry is responsible for the upkeep and preservation of these spaces. McLucas mentioned that one of the more difficult aspects of this task is that the sites are outdoors and therefore are constantly exposed to the elements. 

“As far as the preservation plan, these are spaces that are outside; they’re not in climate-controlled areas,” McLucas said. “So when you think about an outdoor historical site, you have to really think a little bit differently as far as how you’re preserving it. It’s not like preserving a house [because that is] just another set of conditions. You’re more susceptible to nature.” 

Although the Freemantown and Shelton cemeteries are maintained by Berry’s grounds crew and various groups of student volunteers throughout the year, going one step further and actively preserving the burial sites is a task that requires a significant amount of funding. That is where grants such as the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund come in. 

Berry alumna Jennifer Dickey (80c), a professor of history at Kennesaw State University and the preservation consultant for Berry, played a major role in applying for the grant and said that it was something she had been looking into for a few years.

“I had, for a number of years, been looking into some possible funding sources for us to be able to do some additional work at these two cemeteries on the Berry campus,” Dickey said. “We had applied in a previous cycle for this grant, and we didn’t get it, which is not unusual for the first attempt.” 

Dickey said that working with her students on these sites for a preservation class at Kennesaw is what helped put Berry in the running for the award this time around.

“Students in one of my preservation classes had done an application for a declaration of preliminary eligibility for listing on the national register with the State Historic Preservation Office, and we got a positive response from [the office] on that front, Dickey said, “ that put us in a bit stronger of a position for this second go at this grant.”

Funding from the grant will mainly go towards hiring a cultural restoration firm that will go onto the Freemantown and Shelton cemeteries. The firm will do a ground radar penetrating survey in order to collect data such as the number of burials at each site and their conditions. 

“That [survey] will give us additional information on the conditions of the burials, [the] true number of how many [people] are buried there, [and the] boundaries of the cemetery, and then we’ll use that information to kind of come up with the preservation plan,” Casee Gilbert, Berry’s chief of staff who also played an important role in securing the grant, said. 

Ultimately, Dickey and Gilbert hope that the data can be utilized to develop a curriculum for schools in Rome to use. 

“One of my longer-term goals, which is beyond the scope of this grant, is for us to really develop some curriculum materials that we can disseminate to schools and to teachers and school systems so they can do field trips to these sites and can learn about things like the Reconstruction period and African-American settlements in that area, but also things like the Great Migration,” Dickey said. 

The Freeman and Shelton family descendents will also be able to benefit from the preservation efforts put on by Berry. Gilbert mentioned that she and Dickey are committed to working with the families and keeping them involved in the project, too. 

“We’ll engage the families as well because we want this to be a tool for them to use as well,” Gilbert said. “Each family has their own nonprofit associated [with] their descendents, and we would love for them to be able to capitalize on our findings, to be able to use it.” 

Gilbert added that preserving these sites will help the Freeman and Shelton families share their stories and further educate the Rome community about local history. 

“We’ve spent a lot of times the past two years figuring out how we can tell the story of these families through our programs and increase engagement within our own community and outside of the Berry community, and part of it is people just don’t even know that [the cemeteries] exist,” Gilbert said. “So it’s providing opportunities for people to visit, to have access, to hear the stories, to hear directly from the descendents [and] to engage with the spaces in a meaningful way.” 

Dickey said that the grant will be beneficial for both the Berry and Rome communities in that it makes the cemeteries legible to a larger audience and also helps inform decisions about the preservation of the sites into the future. 

“I think being able to do this sort of documentation and planning with these sites will be great from sort of a recognition throughout Berry and Rome-Floyd County,’ Dickey said. “But more importantly, it will help us make better decisions in terms of preservation going forward, and to again sort of make sure that both of these sites are well-cared for in perpetuity, which I think is the responsibility that Berry has as the owner of the land for these two cemeteries to exist.”