The Friends of East End and Ancestral Capital collaborated in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, Jan. 15, to clean up Evergreen Cemetery.

The Friends of East End is a volunteer organization established in 2017 to clean and maintain East End Cemetery, an African-American burial ground in Henrico County.

The organization expanded its efforts into Evergreen Cemetery, another African-American burial ground in Richmond that borders the East End Cemetery.

Ancestral Capital is a volunteer organization that “has a mission to change or enhance our perception of history by taking ownership of it,” said John Mitchell, a member of the organization who has ancestors buried in Evergreen Cemetery.

The cleanup on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was the Friends of East End’s first volunteer day since March 2020 after being forced out of the cemetery by the Enrichmond Foundation, said Brian Palmer of the Friends of East End. Volunteer events on Martin Luther King Jr. Day are often the largest volunteer days for the organization, he said.

The group had around 70 volunteers focused on the upper hill of Evergreen Cemetery, including families who signed up through the City of Richmond. Ancestral Capital had 85 volunteers working at the bottom of the hill.

“We had our volunteers pulling up invasive weeds by the roots if they could and if they couldn’t, just snipping them fairly low to the ground,” Mr. Palmer said.

A handful of volunteers were guided through the process of unearthing a few headstones due to the risk of destroying or accidentally departing them from the souls they belong to, Mr. Palmer said. The volunteers followed the best practices of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which involved rinsing and scrubbing repeatedly with plain water and allowing the sun to do the rest of the work.

The groups volunteered between 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m, with the Friends of East End braving the snowy and chilly weather, Mr. Palmer said.

Ancestral Capital’s group had the earlier start of the two, but some volunteers, “young and old,” stayed back to help, Mr. Mitchell said. Mr. Mitchell, who once worked at Evergreen Cemetery, helped curate volunteer groups as a part of Ancestral Capital in partnership with the Richmond Planet Foundation.

“Ancestral Capital organized the activity and filmed it to promote volunteerism in the Black community,” Mr. Mitchell said.

The goal was to curate a diverse group of volunteers. While all volunteers are welcome and appreciated, it was important to have Black volunteers with hands on the ground, Mr. Mitchell said. It also was important to get volunteers who would likely return to volunteer on a regular schedule in the future, he said.

Outside of cleaning the cemetery, Mr. Mitchell is working with the Mission Continues, a nonprofit veterans empowerment organization, to place memorial veteran markers for Buffalo Soldiers buried in Evergreen Cemetery who do not currently have recognition.

The Friends of East End make sure to tell the stories of those who have been forgotten and neglected by society at large, Mr. Palmer said. They also take photos of headstones and upload them to FindAGrave.com so people can find their deceased loved ones no matter where they are.

“Reclaiming their stories is as important as reclaiming the physical site,” he said.