SEBASTIAN COUNTY, Ark. — A lost piece of history lies beneath the River Valley. A Greenwood woman says she’s responsible for helping uncover what was lost.
“It’s a beautiful place," Jana Evans Petty of Greenwood said. "There’s just so much history here."
She’s talking about the Cherokee African American Cemetery. It was established back in 1858 in southern Sebastian County in Huntington.
Jana says she just happened to stumble upon it one day while on her lunch break.
“I just happened to pass it and thought oooh," she said. "So I turned around and came back and started walking the cemetery and I fell in love with it.”
After that, she returned to the cemetery every chance she got. She said it brings her peace, but the more she ventured there she realized most of it was buried beneath overgrown grass and brush.
“And I was out here one day, and walkin’ and kept findin’ headstones, and I decided to someone’s got to clean it, and it needs to be brought back the way it shouldn't be so I've been on YouTube, learning how to make headstones. Because there are so many that are just marked with fields, and nobody deserves to learn and learn more. So I want to try as much as I can as cheaply as I can because I can't afford a lot."
Petty took it upon herself to rediscover a piece of history that was lost.
“It had been taken really good care of," Petty said. "The man that took care of it had just gotten to the point he couldn’t do it all anymore, so he did what he could and the county had done some work on it. And I was out here one day walking and kept finding headstones. And I thought somebody needs to get out there and do this.”
Petty knew she couldn’t do it alone, so she invited others to join in.
“They were coming from Mansfield, Booneville and there were so many people. I met we had anywhere from 50 to 60 people and everybody just picked a spot and started clearing brush, weed eating or just doing whatever needed to be done.”
The more she researched the headstones that were labeled the more she realized hundreds of years later these were people whose lives mattered.
“Every, this is just black history to me it's my history it's ours. It's the United States history. And if you forget one part of history. The rest of it," Petty said.
Petty says she received a thank you for uncovering what had been lost.
“An old wise tale I guess that the spirits dropped the feathers to say thank you. And so when I was walking the cemetery a few minutes ago I started finding the feathers, and I picked him up with a sign of saying thank you for the work you've done.”
Jana says her work isn’t finished yet and there’ still so much to be done. If you’re interested in joining the clean-up efforts contact Jana on the Hey Greenwood! What’s Happening? Facebook page.