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Houston Chronicle
Claire Goodman
Dozens of volunteers came together in the freedmen’s town of Kendleton on Saturday to clean gravestones at a historically Black cemetery in Bates Allen Park that serves at the final resting place for many former slaves who learned of their liberation 158 years ago.
The Juneteenth clean up is part of an ongoing effort to turn the park, which had fallen into disrepair, into the first African-American memorial in the Houston area. The endeavor began in February 2022 when Congressman Pete Olson went to the cemetery pay his respects to Benjamin Franklin Williams, the first Black member of the House of Representatives, and found his headstone face-down and covered in mud.