Update: Big Joe Williams Headstone Dedication 

Big Joe Williams RIP

Chicago Tribune, Aug 21, 1968.

The Times, Dec 19, 1982.

Siloam Rosenwald School and Biddleville Cemetery in Charlotte, NC

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission is seeking help to preserve a historic school for black children, including the possibility of having it moved from a lot near UNC-Charlotte where it was built in the 1920s.

Dan Morrill, of the landmarks commission, says the Siloam Rosenwald School on John Adams Road is “highly endangered” due to deterioration. This happened despite being designated a historic landmark in 2006, he said.

The property is owned by the Tribute Companies, which has reportedly asked the landmarks commission to help find someone to take the building for preservation. It was built on the site as part of a 20th-century project to educate African-American children throughout the South. The current structure replaced an old log cabin, historians say.

“Unless something is done soon, the Siloam Rosenwald School will be beyond repair,” Morrill said in a statement.

“Rough estimates suggest that to restore the school will cost $150,000. Moving it elsewhere would require an additional $50,000. The fate of the building rests first with Tribute Companies. They own it.”

In March 2008, the owner received approval for plans to restore the school but did not move forward with the project. “Indeed, the Siloam School has not received any improvements and is deteriorating rapidly,” Morrill said.

He’d like to see the building used for classes that would make the community more aware of its African-American heritage. “There are many options. As in most cases, however, the issue comes down to money and setting priorities. Perhaps the only solution is to let the Siloam Rosenwald School crumble and go away,” Morrill said in a statement.

Rosenwald Schools were named for Julius Rosenwald, the head of Sears Roebuck & Co. Rosenwald joined with Booker T. Washington of Tuskeegee Institute to build new school buildings for African-Americans throughout the South.

The Siloam Rosenwald School harkens back to a day when Mecklenburg County was overwhelmingly rural. It sits on its original site, which is now located at the entrance to an apartment complex owned by Tribute Companies. The Historic Landmarks Commission did examine the building in 2013 and found that the structure was capable of being moved, Morrill said.

Charlotte City Council voted last week to offer historic landmark protections for another important African-American site, the old Biddleville Cemetery, founded in 1873.

Biddleville Cemetery is considered vital on several counts: It wasn’t a slave cemetery, but was instead a rare neighborhood cemetery for free blacks. It’s also the resting place of some of the city’s most notable black citizens, including veterans of the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II.

"No Vacancy?": Filling Up the Cemeteries

Development pushes up against Williamsville Cemetery, off Orange Centre Drive near U.S. Route 23 in Orange Township. The graveyard is closed to new burials. 

Cemeteries have only so much space. And yet with an endless supply of new customers, they rarely have to put up "no vacancy" signs.

Last week, tiny Williamsville Cemetery in Orange Township essentially did that, declaring that it was suspending new burials because the grounds had reached their useful capacity.

"It's an old, aged cemetery," said Lee Bodnar, Orange Township's administrator. "When it was originally laid out, the plots were significantly smaller than are required today, and because of its age, we were concerned about disrupting an existing grave."

Few have requested burial there in recent years, said Bodnar. The township's Africa Cemetery has ample future capacity for those who do.

But the burial stoppage underscores a growing concern: the aging population and limited land use.

"Eventually, all cemeteries will have to consider this," said Scott Harmon, president of the Ohio Cemetery Association. "It's going to be an obstacle that each township will have to explore."

Operators treat cemetery grounds much like miniature housing developments, with engineering, landscape design and master plans, said Harmon, who operates Dover Cemetery in Tuscarawas County.

Pre-purchased burial plots and the uncertain timing of death can create planning challenges, said Harmon, who said he has not heard of many cemeteries closing people out. The Dover Cemetery should have capacity for at least another 100 years.

The Ohio Department of Commerce keeps a registry of Ohio's 4,000 public and private cemeteries, but it doesn't track when they reach capacity or have to turn away business, said spokeswoman Lindsey Burnworth.

A national expert said cemeteries were built long ago, driven by supply and demand, to be near people and to serve them for generations.

"They're the only business that has to service what they sell forever," said Robert Fells, executive director and general counsel of the Virginia-based International Cemetery Cremation and Funeral Association, a national trade association. Most have endowment care accounts composed of a percentage of revenue that must go toward perpetual maintenance.

When cemeteries become landlocked, as often happens in urban areas, "we call them dormant cemeteries, when they run out of spaces," Fells said. But many in rural areas "have so much acreage, that even 200 years from now they will not have used it all," he said.

The rise of cremation has taken some of the pressure off cemetery land, Fells said.

"The cremation rate is nationally about 50 percent," he said. "That alone has extended the useful life of many cemeteries."

Funeral directors point to options other than burial, including columbaria that store ashes, said Melissa Sullivan, executive director of the Ohio Funeral Directors Association. Cemeteries, she said, likely will have to expand into less-developed areas eventually.

"Are you having to move further out? Probably," she said. "But we still have quite a bit of ground, and we're having more and more choices."