City launches website about Unity Cemetery project

The DCN News Blog Online TV response: West the reporterr never seems to amaze me that when he write certain articles and about certain folk he pick and choose how far he wants to go back and how he want to paint a negative picture of certain folk. The article is about half-trues and does not mention when the Rocky Mount City Council Andre Knight and others tried to put monies in the budget for Unity Cemetery years ago and the late Mark Bowling, Jerry Fisher hosts on WHIG-TV and some others didn’t want that and said they wanted to clean it up. Tell the whole story. It tickles me how these White are always promoting known criminals with actual records.

People wanting to know more about Unity Cemetery and the efforts to restore and preserve the historically Black burial ground off East Grand Avenue in the eastern part of the city now have a go-to online link.

That link, www.unitycemeterync.com, provides the story of Unity Cemetery, with a timeline and with a collection of present-day snapshots of the location. That link also provides contact information for what is being called the Unity Cemetery Restoration and Preservation Project.

Unity Cemetery was incorporated in 1901 and is 18 acres in size.

As family members either died or moved away from the Rocky Mount area, the location began looking more like a forest than a burial ground, although there have been cleanup efforts in the more recent past.

The condition of Unity Cemetery increasingly became an issue in 2020 when resident Samuel Battle kept bringing up the subject during the public input phase of City Council regular meetings.

Resident Tarrick Pittman began organizing a group that made a community cleanup effort of Unity Cemetery a reality on Feb. 6, 2021.

Battle and residents Steve Cederberg, Steve Pridgen and Pridgen’s wife, Tracy, also had key roles in the cleanup effort. Other cleanup days followed.

On March 8, 2021, the City Council spent about an hour of a work session discussing Unity Cemetery and went on to approve the adoption of recommendations by then-City Manager Rochelle Small-Toney and her team. (Read more)