News
Council give group 30 days to prepare for cemetery case
BY AMY RITCHART AND STAFF WRITER MIKE PERRY
The Leaf-Chronicle, Clarksville, TN
Local residents are glad the City Council put off voting on accepting
the donation of Mount Olive Cemetery.
The 30-day postponement will give council members more time to consider
the proposal. It will also give the Mount Olive Historical Preservation
Society, a group formed to save the cemetery, more time to make their
case.
"The council members did not have a chance to hear arguments from the
Historical Society," said Geneva Bell, a Clarksville resident and
founding member of the society. "There was so much that we didn't have
time to tell them."
The preservation society wants the city to accept donation of the
historically black cemetery from landowner Robert Davis.
Ward 5 Councilman Phil Drew, at Thursday's regular council meeting,
requested the cemetery discussion be postponed for 30 days. Drew said he
wanted to give preservation society members a chance to address the
council before they voted.
Preservation society members said they are preparing to speak at the
June 28 council work session.
Davis and preservationists believe the city will be able to protect
the diminishing cemetery, as well as utilize the historic site as
an educational stop for tourists. City ownership also will allow
preservationists to apply to have the cemetery registered on the
National Register of Historic Places.
"Definitely this is for the best. We plan to have a very sound
presentation on the 28th," said Nancy Dawson, professor of
African-American studies at Austin Peay State University, who said the
cemetery could be used as a tourist site. "We're calling all kinds of
people in to get help on this. All eyes will be on Clarksville.
We're going to keep going until we get some kind of resolution," she
said. Dawson is already working with Rob Freeland, professor of
biosystems, engineering and environmental science at the University of
Tennessee at Knoxville. Freeland is willing to 'use ground-penetrating
radar to map the graves in the cemetery. "They're doing this free of
charge," Dawson said. "It demonstrates the funding that's already
coming. There's already financial support."
Freeland said he is working on a cemetery project in Columbia, Tenn.,
where he has developed an
interactive Web-based map of Columbia's Greenwood Cemetery. "We
pull an instrument across the ground and map the graves," he said. "What
I'll be doing for Clarksville is a Web interactive map. You can zoom in
on it. It will have all the grave markings."
Freeland said Columbia's Parks and Recreation was quoted a rate of
$30,000 for mapping 5 acres. 'To have it done commercially is very
expensive," he said. "I help nonprofits and municipalities." Bell said
members of the historical society want to stress that the group members
are not looking for money from the city, nor do they want the city to
have any expense in taking donation of the land.
But Erin Hinton, who lives near the cemetery, said some in the area are
against the city taking control of the land. "There are a few
residents who are opposed to the city taking over, because they don't
want the city to have that liability," Hinton said. "The city doesn't
have the means to do it. Even if it doesn't cost them any money, if
somebody gets hurt on the property, the city could get sued. "I'm
in favor of postponing it — if it isn't voted down — till other options
can be explored."