Washtenaw County's only known historic Black cemetery is moving into a new phase of restoration, with volunteers set to learn how to clean, repair and reset sunken headstones at Woodlawn Cemetery in Ypsilanti Township this October. The training events, scheduled from noon to 4 p.m. on October 10 and October 17, come after local organizations and hundreds of volunteers have spent years clearing the overgrown, long-neglected burial ground at 7800 S. Huron River Drive.
According to MLive, volunteers will be taught to safely assess, lift and reset grave markers on their bases, and to mark and clean known headstones. Melanie Purkis, who owns Purkis Cemetery Preservation, will conduct the training, and attendees are encouraged to register online in advance. The workshops are also expected to be filmed for a documentary that will include interviews with descendants of people interred at the cemetery.
Six Decades of Neglect
Pastor Garther Roberson, who served as pastor of Ypsilanti's Second Baptist Church, founded Woodlawn Cemetery in 1946 after purchasing a plot of land at a time when other cemeteries refused to bury people of color, per MLive's reporting. The cemetery was established to provide Black community members a resting place amid discrimination and racism, according to the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County.
That organization has spearheaded the restoration project, which it says has been propelled by more than 300 dedicated volunteers. The cemetery went unmaintained starting in 1965, according to a separate mlive.com report, allowing trees and vegetation to grow up and bury or damage many gravestones over the roughly 60 years that followed.
Records Lost, Numbers Still Uncertain
Cemetery records were lost in a garage fire in the 1960s, MLive reports, and a cemetery shed that might have held additional documentation later collapsed. Genealogists continue to gather histories of the people interred there, piecing together what the fire destroyed.
Exactly how many people are buried at Woodlawn remains unsettled. Debby Covington has said the site has at least 500 gravesites, while the AACHM's own materials describe it as the final resting place for over 150 African Americans, and the Sun Times News has reported more than 250 Black county residents are buried there. Researchers have separately confirmed the names of 106 people whose remains are buried at the cemetery, according to WEMU, while a November 2025 ground-penetrating radar survey found what investigators believed were 160 gravesites, per mlive.com's earlier coverage.
Radar and Removal Work Continue
Terracon consulting geophysicists have used ground-penetrating radar machines to detect the locations of potential burials across the property, part of a broader push toward documentation that the AACHM says took hold by 2025 after 2024's heavier brush-clearing work. Volunteers have unearthed buried headstones and cleared overgrown vegetation, and more trees are slated for removal this fall on the southern portion of the site.
The DTE Foundation awarded a $10,000 grant to the restoration project, which is also supported by the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, the Washtenaw County Racial Equity Office and the Washtenaw African American Genealogical Society. The effort is partnered with the Washtenaw County Historic District Commission and Ypsilanti Township, whose board unanimously voted in April 2025 to support the restoration plan, as Bridge Michigan has reported. That outlet notes the broader plan calls for cleaning headstones, replacing those too damaged or missing, and installing a historic marker for the site.
Covington has said the restoration's current phase is exciting precisely because of the work already completed. The ultimate goal, organizers say, is to make it easier — or even possible — for families to find and visit gravesites long hidden by decades of neglect, work that mirrors a broader national movement to restore abandoned Black cemeteries documented by outlets including NBC News.
