Scout seeking Eagle status joins rehab efforts at Southern Hill Cemetery

For a decade, people committed to righting a wrong and both regaining and preserving history have worked to rehabilitate Southern Hill Cemetery in Gadsden. Now, a high school sophomore seeking Scouts BSA’s highest honor has joined the effort.

As his Eagle Scout Service Project, Noah Meredith plans to, by the end of October, construct 100 concrete headstone bases for currently unmarked graves at the historic Black cemetery at the end of Sixth Street in Gadsden. (It’s also known as the Sixth Street Cemetery.)

Meredith, a student at Westbrook Christian School and a member of Scout Troop 151 in Southside, discussed his plan and sent out a call for those interesting in helping or sponsoring him at the first Gadsden City Council meeting of the month.

He was at the cemetery during fall break, receiving instruction from Clarence Wellman and Mark Galbreath of Gadsden’s Lincoln Hill Cemetery on how to align the bases and mix concrete and pour it into frames to create them, in preparation for workdays beginning at 9 a.m. on Oct. 21 and Oct. 28.

More: Slaves, bodyguards or soldiers? Gadsden group honors Black men they count among Confederate veterans

Eagle projects must serve the community and allow the candidate to demonstrate leadership skills. Meredith said he got the idea for his, indirectly, through Council President Kent Back, who he attends First Baptist Church of Gadsden with.

“Back before COVID, Mr. Kent asked my dad (Jamie Meredith) if the company he’s with (C&J Financial) could do anything to help this cemetery,” he said. “They weren’t able to, but after COVID my dad shared the idea with me and I thought it was a terrific idea, especially after I saw the cemetery.”

Southern Hill was the first and largest — covering 8.5 acres — Black cemetery in Gadsden. It dates to 1826, only seven years after Alabama became a state, and at one point was owned by the Woodliff family who founded another historic cemetery, Forrest, across town. It was added to the Alabama Historic Register in 2013.

Past Gadsden Times coverage of the cemetery has noted that “slaves, early settlers, children, landowners, sharecroppers, educators, preachers, steel mill laborers and businessmen and women” are buried there, as are veterans from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II and the Korean War.

A ceremony was held at the cemetery in 2021 by a heritage group honoring Black Confederate veterans it says are buried there.

It fell into disuse and disrepair over the years, especially after the City of Gadsden and the Gadsden Housing Authority in the 1950s through eminent domain took the adjacent land in what had been the predominantly Black Forest Hill community, sending that population across town to other areas like Tuscaloosa Avenue and Green Pastures in East Gadsden.

Chari Bostick, director of Grace Heritage Community Development, who launched the most recent push to clean the cemetery up and restore dignity to it in 2013, detailed what was called the Southside Redevelopment Project to The Times in 2016.

She said what was billed as “slum clearance” involving Bay, Cherry, First, Lamar, Lee, South Sixth and Tracy streets and Cleveland Avenue actually destroyed a thriving business district that included barber shops, cafés, churches, a laundry and theaters. It also uprooted professionals like dentists, doctors and teachers, with the goal of preventing integration.

Bostick has heard from people who remember playing in the cemetery, or actually seeing funerals and graves being dug by hand. Once people were disconnected from the area, however, memories of the site faded.

That changed because of the interest in genealogy, she said, and where Southern Hill once was a dead end for those researching their heritage, blanks have been filled in from the mapping efforts and through some funeral home records, although many of those were lost when those businesses closed.

Bostick was with Meredith at the council meeting as he described this “special project” for the city and his hope that the community could “come together” to “honor the people buried there, because their lives mattered.” She said she is letting him take the lead “and give me his ideas, rather than me taking on the responsibility. I want him to be aware of all the history of the things he’s working on, so he’ll be proud of the project he puts forth.”

She also was on hand, as was his mother, Katie Meredith, during the fall break workday as Meredith learned the basics of what his task requires, and said she wished more people would get involved in trying to “restore decency and dignity” to the cemetery.

“This is years of neglect,” she said, “and we’re trying to make sure that we put things right.”

Bostick said she has the 100 graves mapped where the headstone bases will be constructed, and roughly 900 graves mapped overall. Those are recorded with photos and GPS coordinates at the Find a Grave website.

She said there are probably “three times that many” overall, however, in wooded areas that haven’t been cleared yet (only about half the property has) and down a slope toward Lake Gadsden.

The Vines at Williamsburg apartment complex on Newton Street sits on part of the original cemetery property, according to Bostick, “causing a lot of damage.”

And a sewer line that runs through the cemetery broke, flooding some graves and “floating some casket handles and things up,” she said. City crews were working the day Meredith and Bostick were onsite to impregnate the line with a bladder to prevent future leaks.

Meredith has been involved in Scouting since the fourth grade, and said the program has “really taught me how to be a better person and look out for other people, as opposed to just yourself.”

The cemetery is in council member Jason Wilson’s district and he’s been actively involved in efforts to undo what he called a “tremendous wrong in this community that goes on to this day.” He praised Meredith for choosing a project that he’ll “value the rest of your life.”

Wilson recalled the book “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University who, while terminally ill, gave a lecture on achieving your childhood dreams.

He said Pausch was bombarded with applications as he was establishing the school’s computer science department in the early 1970s, but noted that “the one thing that is still relevant on your résumé 40 years after you achieve it is being an Eagle Scout,” and that someone with that status was guaranteed a face-to-face interview.

“I applaud you, because I know the hard work it takes to get all those badges on that sash,” Wilson told Meredith. “I know how you have to overcome stuff that a lot of young kids wouldn’t do, like wearing that uniform to school every now and then as part of that progression toward Eagle Scout. But the sacrifice you’ve made is going to be something that’ll pay dividends for you for a long, long time.”

Those interested in helping with the project can call 256-504-9831.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Eagle Scout project targets historic Black cemetery