Скачать или смотреть Activists try to preserve Black Georgia cemetery

(26 Jul 2021) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4337005

Some residents of Newnan, Georgia want the city to invest in and protect a Black cemetery.
They say Black residents were not properly consulted before construction was approved on a skate park next door.
The sprawling skate park is nearly complete, but activists claim the cemetery site has been desecrated during construction by debris from the site.
"The land has been for 133 years, it's been designated as the colored cemetery, the cemetery for enslaved Black citizens in the city of Newnan," said Lillie Smith, a local Coweta County resident.
Smith added: "I think people get frustrated because they think we want to blame them for slavery, we want to blame them for everything that's happened in the past. But I know there's nobody here in the city of Newnan who owned slaves. But just because you did not live through that doesn't mean you can't acknowledge that it happened."

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