Black Burial Grounds Are Disappearing as Families Fight to Protect Them

Black Burial Grounds Are Disappearing as Families Fight to Protect Them

The first time Terry O’Neal walked into an old cemetery, she found splintered coffins pushed up by storms and time, with “skeletons sitting outside of caskets.” In Chloe, Louisiana, the acre that holds generations of Black, Creole, and Indigenous families looked more like an abandoned field than a resting place, she recalled.  The neglect in death felt intentional to her, and increasingly more urgent as attacks on Black burial grounds have sprea…