WIMAUMA, Fla. (WFTS) — At Wimauma Cemetery, a cluster of graves told Shirley Brown's story. Her loved ones are buried in the cemetery.
Brown is a fellow with the Allegany Franciscan Ministries Fellowship of the Common Good. Under the program, she was tasked with launching a project that benefits the community.
"I choose Wimauma Cemetery because it's home. And I saw the growth that I thought needed an update, you know, as far as flowers, grass, or whatever. So that's why I choose it as my project; to just simply come in, put some grass, some flowers, and call it a day. That's beautification. That's all I wanted to do," she recalled.
But what started as a call from her loved ones to beautify the cemetery morphed into a call from other souls in the cemetery. Souls that, to the naked eye, aren't obvious.
"I realized that we had graves that you couldn't see. I can tell by the depressions, we had graves that had no markers, no nothing was on those graves. So I had to sit my project on the side just for a little bit," she added.
Brown, his sister Jackie, and others in the community embarked on a journey to bring a voice to the people previously forgotten.
"We can at least put a memorial to recognize them because they were special to someone at one time or another," she said.
TECO is working not far from the cemetery. There's also a railroad track nearby. Both TECO and CSX, as well as Hillsborough County, have worked with the group trying to uncover the graves.
Geo View spent multiple days at the cemetery, scouring every inch to find the unmarked graves, using geothermal imaging.
"When they came out and did the underground excavation. That was when it hit home. Like, okay, this is it. It's happening. This was the biggest step. Locating these graves that's in the cemetery that we could not see," Brown said.
By Friday, Geo View gave the group a welcome sound; the hammering of stakes in the ground. Their imaging found 89 unmarked graves amid the dozens of marked graves.
The cemetery is to the side of First Prospect Missionary Baptist Church. The church is just another piece of the project. Deacon Michael Long pointed out many of the unmarked graves are near family plots. Those marked graves are well-known members of this small community.
"A lot of the descendants that are out here, their descendants are still living in this community. So it's a personal thing that people around here want to see, you know, including the church," Deacon Long said.
So with the church, the team is now working on identifying the recently rediscovered graves.
And hopefully, turning those wooden stakes into permanent markers that identify who was laid to rest there.
"The church is community. And the people that live around here, come to church here. So, you know, we, we want to see this, this cemetery look like it should look," he said.
"It would mean the world to me to see the cemetery looking the way it's supposed to look. Because even though you are gone, you still belong to someone who will still love you," Brown said.
Now that some graves have been identified, the group is ready to work on making the graves known permanently.
That means moving into grant writing, reaching out to lawmakers, and getting the cemetery on the historic register.
On July 1, the Abandoned and Historic Cemeteries Bill was signed into law (HB 49).
Under that law, the state now has the Historic Cemeteries Program and an affiliated Advisory Council.
It frees up $1 million for research on abandoned cemeteries, repairs, restoration, or maintenance of African American cemeteries.
But with just $1 million to spread throughout the state, time is of the essence.
The group is fast at work trying to secure funds. That's in addition to the historic preservation and finding the people who may have information about who lay unmarked for so many years.
There's also still the likelihood of more graves outside of the territory tested.
But for now, they're celebrating Friday's win: a wooden stake showing that those empty spaces are actually full of Wimauma's past.
If you believe you know someone who was buried in an unmarked grave, or if you have any pictures or family records you may have stored away, you can email Jackie Brown at jfbconnect@yahoo.com.
