HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- It's hidden history in Richmond that is slowly but surely coming to light.
At Woodland Cemetery in Henrico County, despite the snow and ice, volunteers shoveled away during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, unearthing headstones buried underneath decades of growing brush and roots.
Though the story of the cemetery begins in 1891, the spot was officially created in 1917 by newspaper editor John Mitchell Jr. to be a revered resting place for African American families.
However, a good portion of the cemetery was neglected for years, leading to massive overgrowth and deteriorated headstones and burial sites.
Between 2018 and 2020, volunteers like Kimberly Cousins ramped up efforts to clear back overgrowth and unearth headstones, finding roughly 5,000 headstones in the process.
About 90 headstones belonging to veterans, buried in a pile under dirt and vines behind the cemetery's chapel, were recovered.
"We actually started coming out here as a family at our family reunions to clear some things up," Cousins said. "Why not come out and help out with everyone else?"
Cousins is now a board member of the Woodland Cemetery Restoration Foundation.
She said unearthing her own family members' headstones was an emotional experience.
"I honestly think I cried just a little," Cousins said. "I think the first thing I said was 'welcome back.'"
Over the MLK Jr. holiday, dozens of VCU student-athletes and even Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin visited the cemetery to help clear brush and dig for headstones.
"This was someone's life," Youngkin said after unearthing the headstone of Deacon Richard Harris, who passed away in the 1940s. "I feel an amazing sense of duty in order to take really good care of this so that this person's life can be remembered again."
"We need the resources," Cousins said. "We are a strong group, but we're a small group, and we have limited resources. We work mainly with what we can get from grants and offices like the Governor's office, or the Mayor's office, or any other political office, who may be able to tie us to places where we wouldn't necessarily have access."
Youngkin said a general fund to support African American cemeteries like Woodland Cemetery had been created and that funding would continue.
"I think this is a matter of the states, but also localities. I know Henrico County does an extraordinary amount, but also, individuals and organizations to do their part," Youngkin said.
About 30,000 unearthed headstones are estimated to be in Woodland Cemetery.
According to the Foundation's Vision30 initiative, resources to beautify and preserve the cemetery, as well as construction and educational initiatives, would cost approximately $30 million over the next 30 years.
"That is a lot of headstones. Those are a lot of people who deserve to have the same respect that we have restored to so many other people," Cousins said.
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