It took nine months, but the Federal Railroad Administration is keeping its promise to take a fresh look at a historic Black cemetery in Richmond and its potential impact on proposed rail improvements between Richmond and Washington.

Lenora McQueen, an advocate for the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground at 5th and Hospital Streets where some of her ancestors are buried, said she has been notified that the FRA has formally reopened the Section 106 review.

That section of a federal law requires government agencies to identify, protect and prevent damage to historic buildings and sites before any work on government financed projects can be undertaken — such as the potential addition of new rail lines to boost passenger train speeds.

The completed report initially done for FRAfailed to recognize the extent of the long-forgotten cemetery where an estimated 22,000 Black people were buried between 1816-1879.

The cemetery apparently was the largest publicly owned cemetery of its kind in the country before it closed, said Ms. McQueen.

The reopening comes after City Council approved the acceptance of two properties from the Sauer Corp. on 7th Street that will bolster the city’s effort to create a trail to connect the burial ground on Shockoe Hill with the original African Burial Ground at 15th and East Broad streets and a slavery memorial heritage campus that is proposed for land adjacent to Main Street Station.

The new Section 106 review is taking place as the federal, state and local governments work on plans to add a third set of tracks to enable higher-speed trains to run between Main Street Station in Virginia’s capital city and Union Station in the nation’s capital.

The existing freight tracks have long run through the lower portion of the once sprawling cemetery that the city and others quickly forgot after it closed. The city also allowed an interstate highway and other buildings to take over the site.

The FRA had issued notices last April of its plans to consider revamping its previous Section 106 review based on new information about the emetery, which has secured state and federal recognition as a historic site as a result of the efforts of Ms. McQueen and history supporters.

“It is my sincere hope and that the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground will be given the care, honor, respect, recognition and protection that it so desperately deserves,” Ms. McQueen stated as a result of the new review.

The burial ground, she noted, “has suffered so greatly and for so long. It deserves to be known, to be seen openly, honestly and in its entirety.”