The inaugural meeting of the Brush Arbor Cemetery Community Advisory Board was held May 2 at the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum to discuss the cemetery restoration project and get community input.

The Brush Arbor Cemetery on University Drive is a more than 200-year-old, historically Black cemetery and is among the oldest cemeteries in Starkville, although it remains widely unrecognized.

Sydney Pullen, a cultural and historical anthropologist at Mississippi State University, welcomed advisory board members and individuals from the community before giving a brief update on the restoration project.

Pullen indicated 46 graves at Brush Arbor Cemetery are marked, with an estimated 80 to 100 unmarked graves that must be identified later using ground-penetrating radar. New burials ceased around the 1950s, and since that time, a number of groups have led efforts to clean up and care for the cemetery.

Pullen said her department, the MSU Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures, had a grant through the National Endowment for the Humanities to train students in research methods and develop an oral history archive related to the cemetery, but that grant has terminated. However, because of the initial work, they do have a core group of individuals working on the project today that includes the Starkville Black Panthers, Starkville Town and Country Garden Club and the City of Starkville.

“Last weekend, the Starkville Town and Country Garden Club led a cleanup at the cemetery and planted some holly shrubs at the bottom of the hill along with around 200 bulbs,” said Pullen.

Lyle MeCaskey, assistant city planner for the City of Starkville, then presented information on the grant funding that has been obtained, as well as the design selected for a new cemetery entrance and potential signage.

MeCaskey said one of the issues related to the cemetery is people do not know it is a cemetery because original wooden markers are gone, and individuals, mainly students, living in the surrounding apartments often walk their dogs in the area without realizing it is a sacred site. Another issue is the hesitancy to work in the cemetery because people do not know where the graves are.

“We want to make sure we do not disturb the remains and are respectful of these grounds,” said MeCaskey.

MeCaskey stated four things they can do without huge sums of money, including site cleanup and stabilization, repair and preservation, creating pathways or improved access, and adding signage and historical interpretation.

“It is so exciting to see this project really coming together and the collaboration that has occurred,” said Cathy Kemp, Starkville Town and Country Garden Club Historic Preservation Committee chair. “The garden club kicked off the idea for a new entrance upon discovering the Mississippi Humanities America250 grant of up to $20,000 for large-scale projects that enhance a community’s capacity to explore and promote local history. We took the idea to Lyle at the City of Starkville, and he and his team greatly improved on it. They got a design for the new entrance created through the MSU Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design. This project really did start with a little seed idea and has blossomed due to the great collaboration between Dr. Sydney Pullen, Lyle MeCaskey and our garden club.”