STARKVILLE – Moving down University Drive, Assistant City Planner Lyle MeCaskey said it’s easy to pass Brush Arbor cemetery without realizing it’s there.
The two-acre historically Black cemetery is marked only by a small sign atop two crumbling concrete steps, with a few weathered gravestones visible beyond a shrub-covered knoll.
With help from civic groups and Mississippi State University faculty, the city plans to change that, having secured more than $150,000 to build a new entrance designed to highlight the site’s significance and improve public access.
“We’ve kind of run into the fact that there is no real identifier beyond the existing signage … to make it a more noticeable, appreciated site in town,” Mecaskey told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “So what we’re looking to do is create an entrance along University Drive that essentially promotes the significance of not only the location itself, but also the individuals that are interred there.”
The cemetery, formerly known as Starkville Colored Cemetery, is a historic landmark, dating back to at least 1882, when 15-year-old Jimmie Cooper was buried there. The most recent recorded burial was in 1954.
The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014, and to several map apps in 2020 after a community push.
The city has received two grants – a $20,000 grant from Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area and a $15,000 America250 Legacy Grant – both requiring matching funds. With an additional $82,209 city contribution, total funding for the project is about $152,209.
Plans include leveling the entrance, installing an 18-inch brick seat wall bearing the cemetery’s name, replacing deteriorating steps with a stairway and paving the sidewalk along University Drive with red brick. Trees will be added for shade without blocking views into the site.
MeCaskey said increasing visibility could also deter misuse. About 80 graves are unmarked, and MeCaskey said some residents, knowingly or not, ride bikes and walk their dogs through the site.
“Maybe they didn’t know … but essentially, whether it’s been from willful neglect or other things, people have done things in the area where, since it’s not been visible from anywhere else, they … had the ability to get away with it,” he said. “What we’re looking to do is just try to make sure that people understand what kind of space that is and its significance … (and) encourage people to kind of see its value and invest some public money in doing so.”
Signage is also planned along the entrance and, eventually, deeper within the cemetery to highlight notable individuals buried there.
Community input, further efforts
Sydney Pullen, an assistant professor in MSU’s Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures, is compiling information about those figures, one of whom is George Washington Chiles, founder of Second Baptist Church and a key figure in bringing the railroad to Starkville.
“There’s a lot of people who were business owners in Needmore and community members in Needmore who are buried in that cemetery,” Pullen told The Dispatch. “(Chiles’) story represents both a larger story of segregation in Mississippi and … of Reconstruction in the United States. … It’s a really unique history there.”
Before finalizing signage, Pullen said she wants input from community members, especially descendents of those buried there.
Pullen is organizing a community advisory board to help guide future preservation plans and decisions.
More formal preservation work began at the site in 2023 with an MSU field school led by Jordan Lynton Cox, a former assistant professor of anthropology at MSU, to digitally document the cemetery’s history and residents.
Those efforts were halted after a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities funding the program was terminated in 2025 in a wave of funding cuts made to comply with executive orders from the Trump Administration aiming to discontinue federally-funded diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
While the department still lacks funding to continue those efforts, Pullen said the department plans to continue collecting oral histories from descendants of those buried in the site, and long term, she hopes to see a comprehensive burial map and a digital archive created.
“All of these sorts of things require money, but … we don’t want to do major changes until we have this community advising board assembled,” she said.
In the meantime, monthly cleanups are organized by the Starkville Town and Country Garden Club’s Historic Preservation Committee and a local Black Panthers chapter.
Last month, the preservation committee, along with members of the city’s landscape department, also planted large shrubs in the back of the cemetery to buffer the site from nearby apartments to coincide with the planned revitalization.
Oktibbeha County District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer, an early supporter of preservation at the site, said he hopes to see efforts to preserve the legacy of Brush Arbor and cemeteries like it continue to inspire future generations.
“I think one of the things that we can do is let (future generations) know the individuals in their lineage did some significant things and overcame some odds, and that lets (them) know … they ought to be able to achieve some things that no one ever thought they would be,” Trainer told The Dispatch. “… I think we need to support that, not only with our personal dollars, but also allocate some public efforts behind it to keep that maintained.”
MeCaskey said the project will be put out to bid by June and will be completed by December, though additional signage may be added later.
Anyone interested in joining an advisory board for the cemetery can email Pullen at [email protected].
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 46 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
