The northern portion of the

Former Gov. Wilder to mark his historic inauguration’s 30th anniversary at VUU

Regina H. Boone/Richmond Free Press New 911 dispatcher graduates Seven new graduates of the Richmond Department of Emergency Communications’ 33rd Basic Dispatch Academy celebrate after a ceremony last Friday at the Richmond Police Training Academy. The new graduates are, from left, Stephanie Z. Franklin, Kyna Meadows, Joseph Kearns, Zakiya St. Dic, Woody Winborn, Safiyyah Muslima Bint Abdul Malik and Justin Fleming. They are flanked at left by Stephen M. Willoughby, director of the Department of Emergency Communications, and at right by Ortoria Hymons, the department’s acting training supervisor. The graduates began their training on Jan. 6 with classroom sessions on dispatch procedures, public safety terminology, handling difficult callers and active shooter situations and fires, and various policies and procedures. They practiced answering 911 emergency calls, rode along with Richmond Police officers and passed several tests to make it to graduation. Now they must complete hundreds of hours of on-the-job training before they can work independently taking 911 calls and dispatching help.

A daylong leadership symposium honoring the 30th anniversary of the inauguration of former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first African-American elected governor, will be held 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, March 26, at Virginia Union University’s Claude G. Perkins Living and Learning Center, 1500 N. Lombardy St.

The symposium, “L. Douglas Wilder: Continuing 30 Years of History, Then & Now,” is sponsored by VUU and the Virginia Commonwealth University Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs and will feature lectures, panel discussions and a keynote address by the 89-year-old former governor, who also served as a state senator and Richmond’s mayor.

Other speakers will include Judge Roger L. Gregory, chief judge of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who will be on a morning panel on judicial and legislative history, and Dr. Larry Sabato, a political analyst and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, who will moderate an afternoon

panel on the 2020 election.

Gov. Wilder, an alumnus of VUU and graduate of Howard University School of Law, served as governor from 1990 to 1994.

Registration for the symposium is $25, which includes lunch and a signed copy of Gov. Wilder’s 2015 autobiography, “Son of Virginia: A Life in America’s Political Arena.”

Details and registration: http://bit. ly/2HyUP6h or go to www.facebook.com/ events/182167266449363/ File photo

Enrichmond unveils $18.6M master plan for Evergreen Cemetery

By Jeremy M. Lazarus

Historic Evergreen Cemetery would be transformed into an outdoor college of AfricanAmerican history and culture if the nonprofit that now owns the burial ground in the city’s East End can pull it off.

The city-created Enrichmond Foundation released an ambitious and expensive plan to turn the once proud but longneglected 59-acre burial ground for at least 20,000 people into a place that would “inspire present and future generations to honor the nation’s AfricanAmerican inheritance” through programming, education and preservation.

Among other things, the plan calls for building a visitor center on the grounds that border East Richmond Road and Stoney Run Parkway, developing a grave record system, installing interpretive signage, creating a memorial garden and highlighting the areas where the most famous people are buried, such as Richmond businesswoman Maggie L. Walker, the first African-American woman to charter and operate a bank.

The preliminary estimate to carry out the vision: $18.6 million, none of which is currently available, according to the foundation.

The vision is contained in a 170-page master plan released Saturday by Enrichmond. Viola O. Baskerville, who led the five-member volunteer team

that worked with Atlanta-based consultants Pond & Co., called the plans the kind that “will stir the soul. They are bold. They are audacious.

“Let us realize the vision. The ancestors have waited way too long,” the former Richmond city councilwoman, General Assembly member and state secretary of administration told about 30 people who attended the plan’s unveiling at the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site in Jackson Ward.

Mayor Levar M. Stoney joined in cheering on planning for Evergreen’s future, but has yet to get the city more involved. The city, for example, continues to maintain ownership of two segregated burial grounds that are no longer used, Colored Paupers and Oakwood Colored Paupers. Those cemeteries abut Evergreen, but the property has not been turned over to Enrichmond to become part of the vision. Like much of Evergreen, the grounds of the two cemeteries are largely overgrown.

John Sydnor, executive director of the Enrichmond Foundation, which was established Mrs. Baskerville Mr. Sydnor in 1990 to support nonprofits that work on recreation, cultural and environmental issues, views the plan as a blueprint for Evergreen’s future.

Enrichmond acquired Evergreen Cemetery in 2017 from the family of Isaiah Entzminger with help from a Virginia Outdoors Foundation grant of $400,000. People were buried in Evergreen until a few years ago.

Still, the master plan is mostly a paper step toward reclaiming the cemetery that has relied mostly on the drive of volunteers such as John Shuck, Veronica Davis, John Bell, Marvin Harris, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and thousands of others.

Evergreen dates to 1891 when AfricanAmerican civic leaders sought to create their own version of the private, white Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond at a time when the city’s burial ground for AfricanAmericans primarily was for those who could not afford burial. However, Evergreen did not add a fee for perpetual care, which was not required. Over time, the gravesites were overgrown with weeds, shrubs and trees.

In addition to Mrs. Walker, the prominent figures buried in Evergreen include crusading editor, banker and AfricanAmerican political leader John Mitchell Jr. and Dr. Sarah Garland Boyd Jones, the state’s first female physician and founder of the area’s first AfricanAmerican hospital.

Despite the many pages in the plan, it is still incomplete. Notably, there is no mention of the separate and equally historic East End Cemetery,

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Enrichmond Foundation Evergreen Cemetery master plan map

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Plus the new # 1 hit single “Hit’em Hard” Pull up True King Lil’ Walter on YouTube for the Go-Go Line Dance version a private, AfricanAmerican cemetery of 16 acre that abuts Evergreen’s west side and which Enrichmond added to its holdings last year. Currently, the entry to Evergreen comes through East End Cemetery.

Opened around 1896, East End Cemetery includes an estimated 13,000 African-American gravesites, including those of educator and civic and political leader Rosa L. Dixon Bowser and of physician and banker Dr. Richard F. Tancil.

Mr. Shuck and volunteers Brian Palmer and Erin Holloway have led untold volunteers to clear the overgrowth at East End. As a result, Mr. Shuck said, about 80 percent of East End is now cleared.

At Evergreen, more than half of the property, including the roads and paths, still have to be cleared, according to Enrichmond. Volunteers and staff Enrichmond has hired have cleared about 22 acres, or 36 percent of the total acreage, and opened up five of the 11 miles of roads and paths that crisscross Evergreen, according to information in the master plan.

Mrs. Baskerville remains optimistic that funds will be raised so that the Evergreen master plan will not sit on the shelf.

“The money is out there,” she said. “We just need to tap into it.”

Enrichmond Foundation Concept for visitor center for Evergreen Cemetery

Upcoming Free Health Seminars

We’ll be offering the following free health seminars at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden’s Kelly Education Center, located at 1800 Lakeside Ave. Registration is recommended. Free parking available.

Tuesday, March 10 | 5:30 p.m. 21st Century Impact of Cancer Care

Wednesday, March 25 | 5:30 p.m. Plant-based Diets for Better Health

Register online at vcuhealth.org/events or call (804) 628-0041 for more information.