The General Assembly, with bipartisan support, is preparing to beef up its efforts to financially support volunteers and organizations seeking to restore long-neglected Black cemeteries and to support efforts to preserve Black historical sites.

Since 2020, the legislature has provided $100,000 a year to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to provide grants to aid those tending graves in Black cemeteries opened before 1900.

That includes nearly $35,000 a year that has gone to the care of two historic Richmond area Black cemeteries, East End and Evergreen cemeteries that date to the 1890s. The grants amount to $5 a grave.

During the next two years, the legislature plans to provide a total of $300,000 to DHR for that purpose. The extra money reflects the approval of Richmond state Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan’s bill to allow payments to cemeteries that were created between 1900 and 1948.

That would open the door to more grant applications.

The growth in this funding has been accompanied by the elimination of state support for the care of Confederate cemeteries and graves, which ended June 30, 2021.

In addition, the General Assembly also is planning to provide DHR $5 million a year through June 30, 2024, to support preservation of historic sites linked to Black, indigenous and people of color.

Richmond state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi spearheaded the legislation to create a new DHR fund for that purpose.

Sen. Hashmi said she pushed the bill after discovering the state had extended such aid to sites for anyone but such groups.

The federal government could soon join in helping to preserve and protect historic Black cemeteries.

Fourth District Congressman A. Donald McEachin, who represents the Richmond area, is part of a bipartisan coalition seeking to win passage of the African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act.

The new bill, much reduced from a similar bill that died in 2020, would provide $3 million a year to the National Park Service to provide grants for maintenance of such cemeteries.

Congressman McEachin introduced the bill last week, which he said would assist in calling attention to burial grounds that can provide “greater understanding of our history.”

He announced the introduction of his bill during a news conference last Saturday at the University of Richmond and the site of a burial ground for an unknown number of enslaved people working on plantations in the area. The university acquired the property in 1910.