Historic Darlington cemetery site of repeat vandalism

DARLINGTON — John H. Williams is upset that Darlington Memorial Cemetery is being vandalized.

Williams has family members buried in the cemetery, which was established in 1890. He also volunteers his time to keep the cemetery in shipshape condition.
“They (vandals) been coming out here turning over some tomb stones and digging some holes in the gravesites,” Williams said. “This makes me angry, you know, because my ancestors and friends are out here. We try to keep the cemetery as clean and spotless as we can.

“And look over there by that big tree. They pushed another stone down. They also ride them three wheelers in here and mess up things.”

Williams said it takes four days to cut the grass and use a weed eater around the graves. He said the vandalism has been reported to the Darlington Police Department.

Mary Warsaw-Capers is treasurer of the Darlington Memorial Cemetery.

“The last situation last weekend, somebody with a truck came in and ran over some of the bricks and up on some of the graves,” she said. “It seems like every time we have a ceremony down here we have this problem. We just had a Memorial Day ceremony.”

Half of the cemetery is in Darlington city limits and the other half is in the county.

“This is a historic cemetery, and we’re trying to get all of it annexed into the city,” Warsaw-Capers said. “It’s been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Our goal is to preserve the cemetery, and we work hard to do that. At one time you could hardly find the gravesites out here because it was so overgrown.

“This place is so isolated that we can’t really keep an eye on it,” she said. “I think what we really need is a gate and some cameras. We’re working to try to get some grants to do some of those things.”

Some of Darlington’s most prominent African-Americans are buried in the remote cemetery. Also interred there are 106 veterans, including those who served in the Spanish American War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

“The Sons of the Confederate Veterans came out here last year and put markers on the graves of those who served the Confederacy,” Warsaw-Capers said. “This is an interesting place, and I’m not sure why people would be so mean-spirited as to come out here and vandalize it. I guess they have nothing else to do.”

A historical marker at the entrance to the cemetery reads, “This cemetery, established in 1890, was originally a five-acre tract when it was laid out as the cemetery for the nearby Macedonia Baptist Church. The first African American cemetery in Darlington, it includes about 1,900 graves dating from the late 19th century to the present. In 1946, Bethel AME Church and St. James United Methodist Church, both nearby, established their own cemeteries here as well.”

Among the prominent people buried in the cemetery are Rev. Isaac Brockenton (1829-1908), founding pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church; Edmund H . Deas (1855-1915), Darlington County politician; and Lawrence Reese (1864-1915), a self-taught designer and master craftsman who designed and built several huge houses on West Broad Street.

Meanwhile, Williams was wearing a Mayo High School Athletic Hall of Fame shirt. Mayo was an all-black high school when he graduated in 1959. Williams played football, basketball and baseball.

“I was mostly football and baseball,” he said. “I was a left halfback in football. They called me ‘Magic’ because I was such a tricky runner.”