The city of Salisbury will cover the cost of repairing broken headstones that were pushed off their bases or knocked over in recent weeks at the historic African American Dixonville Cemetery off Old Concord Road.
It's unclear when the damage took place, or who was responsible. Volunteers and city staff discovered the broken headstones last Wednesday, Feb. 2, when they visited the cemetery to film videos for Black History Month.
Among them was Emily Perry, who's been leading community efforts to improve and maintain the cemetery as chair of the Dixonville-Lincoln Memorial Task Force.
"I just don't see how someone could do that," Perry said. "This has been a community project. Different people have given to this project and worked with us on it, so they really desecrated the community by doing this."
A police report said 16 headstones were found damaged, but the city later said only 12 were likely pushed over or damaged by vandals. Four others may have simply fallen over or broken on their own.
Perry said the Dixonville Cemetery is one of the oldest African American cemeteries in Salisbury, with its earliest gravestone dating to 1851. Volunteers have identified 530 people who were buried in the cemetery from the mid-1800s through the 1960s, including people who were enslaved.
Other notable people buried in the cemetery include Bishop John Jamison Moore, who founded the first AME Zion Church in San Francisco in 1852 before moving to Salisbury later in life, and the Rev. Harry Cowan, who was born into slavery before going on to establish 49 churches, including the Dixonville Baptist Church — now First Calvary Baptist — just north of the cemetery.
Burials at the cemetery largely stopped after the city of Salisbury demolished much of the surrounding Dixonville community in the name of urban renewal beginning in 1963.
In 2010, then-Salisbury Mayor Susan Kluttz assembled a task force of community members and asked them to look into ways to improve the cemetery grounds and pay respect to those buried there.
Since then, the task force has raised more than $516,000 through several community events, fundraisers, an online GoFundMe and a $100,000 contribution from the city.
The money has been used for new sidewalks and landscaping, as well as two granite monuments that were installed last year on which the task force hopes to engrave the names of those interred at the cemetery.
The task force is also working on a "Memorial Path" that will wind through the cemetery and include interpretive stops that honor the history of the cemetery and the Dixonville neighborhood.
Task force members are also developing plans to convert the historic African American Lincoln Elementary School, which has long sat vacant, into senior housing.
In the meantime, a spokesperson for the city of Salisbury said that six of the damaged headstones had been returned to their upright position, and the city planned to cover the cost of repairing the others.
As of Wednesday, Feb. 10, the city was working to get a quote from Salisbury Marble and Granite for the repairs, and a timeline for the repairs was still getting worked out.
