LEWISVILLE, Texas — Hundreds of volunteers in Lewisville spent their Martin Luther King Jr. Day in a spot they pass by every day but didn’t know a lot about. That spot contains the history of some of the city’s Black pioneers.
In the small wooded grove, sitting behind a car dealership and a western wear shop along I-35E, sits a small cemetery. The few who do know it refer to it as the Champion-Macedonia Cemetery. Cassie Whitley of Lewisville has been visiting the grounds her entire life. It’s where her family, dating back to her great-grandparents, are buried.
“This is my great-grandfather, Alonzo, and Minnie Champion,” said Whitley, pointing at one of the headstones. “That’s where it all began.”
Whitley said her family was one of a small group to buy into the private cemetery long before her birth. Their additions to the grounds started in the mid-20th century but some graves date as early as the 1800s.
“There’s one back there. He was here during slavery,” said Brenda Mitchell, who also has family buried there.
Unfortunately, Whitley and Mitchell make up a quickly shrinking group aware of the cemetery.
Through the decades, I-35E built up next to the cemetery. The city of Lewisville grew around it to the point where it now sits surrounded by concrete and businesses. For as long as many could remember, the grove looked like overgrown woods to any outsiders. With no signs or indicators of its existence, few seemed to know there was a cemetery with historic significance.
Whitley said her family and the others who own shares have worked hard over the years to keep the grounds clean, but their numbers are dwindling.
“Us women, we try to do the best we could, and it just got to a point where we couldn’t do it anymore,” said Whitley.
Then last month, Jackie Shaw stumbled upon a mention of the cemetery and decided to seek it out.
“On Christmas Day I drove out here to find the cemetery,” said Shaw.
Shaw, a social justice minister at the largest African American church in Denton County, Westside Baptist Church, said she was floored when she saw. The grounds contain the graves of some of the area’s first Black doctors, dentists and community leaders alongside other graves that were marked only by rocks.
Wanting to save it, she said she got in contact with Whitley and other family members at the cemetery and offered the church’s help up-keeping and restoring the cemetery.
On Monday, volunteers from across the community pitched in to mow overgrown grass, rake leaves, and cut away old tree limbs and brush that made the cemetery invisible from the outside. Several students in their Lewisville High School letter jackets even worked alongside headstone restoration experts to carefully scrub and clean up some of the decades-old grave markers in the cemetery.
Though the church will focus on the Champion-Macedonia Cemetery, it’s just one of a number of efforts being taken by volunteers in Texas and across the country to save the sometimes long-forgotten and neglected Black cemeteries hidden across the land. Several have been discovered in recent years that also date back to slavery times but were largely forgotten over time or even ignored in times past.
Several nonprofits and universities like Texas A&M have launched efforts to register those cemeteries and get them acknowledged as historical sites.
Shaw said they began working with county leaders to get Champion-Macedonia recognized as a historic place and see the stories it contain get new life. Just seeing the large turnout for their cleanup efforts on Monday, Shaw said she was overjoyed to be taking on the task.
“The tears and joy to find them and to say there is help coming. I am so sorry, I didn’t know you were here,” said Shaw.
Whitley too said she was overwhelmed as she looked out at the volunteers, young and old, of every race and background helping to clean up and restore the grounds she cares so much about.
“This is amazing. It is,” said Whitley.