WS Chronicle

Dozens of people came together last weekend to place markers at the St. Philips Moravian Second Graveyard, where hundreds of Africans and African Americans are buried in unmarked graves.

In 2018, the Salem Congregation, a council of 12 local Moravian churches, and St. Philips African Moravian Church, launched a search for lost graves in the forgotten African American graveyard located at the corner of Cemetery Street and Salem Avenue. That summer, a team conducted a geophysical investigation to find out just how much history was buried in the graveyard. 

Using radar, the team located more than 300 unmarked graves. Less than 200 were known from church records and only about 50 already had markers.  

Initially, Moravian African Americans were buried in God’s Acre Cemetery, but in 1816 burials were segregated. At that time, African Americans were buried at the graveyard at the St. Philips Moravian Church on South Church Street, which is now part of the Old Salem Museums & Gardens. After the St. Philips graveyard was thought to be full around the late 1850s, African Americans were buried at a gravesite at the corner of Cemetery Street and Salem Avenue.

During the ceremony last weekend, 32 marble markers were placed in the graveyard. After placing a headstone on Saturday morning, Dorothy Pettus, a member of St. Philips and a member of the Salem Congregation Graveyard Committee, said they raised $20,000 for the headstones, a fence, and a gateway that will soon mark the entrance to the graveyard. She mentioned that the Salem Congregation Graveyard Committee has been working to bring the burial site up to par since 2009. 

“For the last 12 years we’ve worked extremely hard to find these unmarked souls and then to raise money to purchase the stones for some of them,” Pettus said. “We are continually raising money, but this means a lot to me to have it cleaned up, the fence put around it, and to recognize these people. It means everything to me because they weren’t recognized, so for them to finally have a resting place and to be recognized, it really means a lot.”

While addressing the crowd, Rev. John Jackman, vice chairman of the Salem Congregation Board of Elders, said, “We have gathered here today to right a great wrong.”