Officials announce state funding for improvements at historic Black cemetery in Danville

The Virginia Department of Historic Resources is providing about $26,000 from its Virginia Historical African-American Cemetery and Graves fund for rehabilitation work at Oak Hill Cemetery at Walters Mill Road and Betts Street.

Danville City Manager Ken Larking and local historian Karice Luck-Brimmer, a former board member of the department, announced the funding during an event at the cemetery Tuesday afternoon.

“When you are walking through an historic cemetery, such as Oak Hill, you are tracing the last footprints of your ancestors,” Luck-Brimmer, community initiatives program associate with Virginia Humanities, told officials and residents who attended the announcement. “Cemeteries offer a glimpse, a unique glimpse, into the past and are excellent biographical resources.”

The money will help pay for cleaning headstones, tree-trimming and cleanup from recent storms in two parts of the 30-acre cemetery, Larking said.

“But the main focus of the funds is to reset, repair and clean existing memorials,” he said.

The two areas contain about 221 memorials, with about 200 to be repaired and/or cleaned during the project, Larking said.

There have been burials at the cemetery since before the 1900s when the cemetery was part of the Almagro community.

Officially established in 1901, Oak Hill has had burials since before the 1900s, Larking said. It was acquired by the city of Danville in 1931.

“There have been over 11,000 burials at Oak Hill,” he said.

An extra 5 acres will be developed at the cemetery. That area will be able to accommodate about 2,000 graves, he said.

“This is the final resting place of so many of our ancestors,” Luck-Brimmer said during her remarks.

African-American cemeteries are part of the cultural landscape and have long been desecrated and inadequately cared for, Luck-Brimmer said. They “are in danger of being lost across the country,” she said.

“As a community, we have a vital role in ensuring that our burial places are preserved,” Luck-Brimmer said.

Since July 1, 2022, the department of historic resources has issued $127,932 in support of projects involving 33 cemeteries, she said. They range from “small churchyards and family cemeteries to immense city burial grounds,” she said.

Larking pointed out how much Almagro loves Oak Hill Cemetery. Established in 1883, Almagro was one of the first incorporated Black communities in the United States at the time.

The project to rehab memorials in the two areas of the cemetery is just the beginning, Larking said.

“The plan is to continue these efforts throughout the rest of the cemetery as we go forward,” Larking said.

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In addition to the cemetery work, the city plans to allocate an extra $1 million for street resurfacing in Almagro, he said.