YOAKUM — Vanita Cheeves cared for people in emergency health crises for 30 years as a nurse. Now, she cares for the dead.
“These are our ancestors. These are the people on whose shoulders we stand,” Cheeves said Thursday. “Their bravery, their fight and their battle to get equality, to be considered Americans, to be considered humans. To me, it is a level of respect to care for this cemetery — I do it to bring their beauty out.”
Vanita Cheeves walks past a headstone at the Yoakum City Colored Cemetery Thursday on Dunn Street.
Thursday, Cheeves stood on a plot of mostly-cleared ground about the size of a small city block where at least 730 African Americans from DeWitt County are buried. The ground is in the middle of the Yoakum Transfer Station, 1603 Dunn St., — a waste disposal and water treatment site.
Far fewer than 730 of those known graves are marked — fewer than 100 or so were clearly marked. Cheeves said there are likely more than 730 people buried at the cemetery.
The Yoakum City Colored Cemetery, also at 1603 Dunn St., was dedicated to the “colored” people of DeWitt County by Annie Dunn in 1893. Dunn donated the land to be used as a final resting place for Black community members. The last person to be buried there died in the late 1990s.
“We keep finding more and more graves we did not know were there as we clear the land,” Cheeves said.
The grave of Augustine Howard, a veteran of the Korean War and Air Force, lies at the Yoakum City Colored Cemetery Thursday on Dunn Street.
Less than three weeks ago, all the graves were buried under brush and debris, including discarded tires and toilets. People were clandestinely dumping on the site for years, Cheeves said.
“This dump encapsulated the cemetery,” Cheeves said. “The cemetery was here before the dump.” However, the city of Yoakum does not own the cemetery and is not responsible for it, she said.
Cheeves and several friends formed and created the Yoakum Memorial Association recently and have set about clearing the land and publicizing the existence of the cemetery.
Discarded tree branches sits at a pile at the Yoakum City Colored Cemetery Thursday on Dunn Street.
“I had no idea this was here. I was in college around 2000, and my grandmother used to talk about the Black cemetery,” Cheeves said. “She taught at the Asberry School, the Black school. When the schools were integrated in 1966, she taught English and Physical Education at Yoakum schools.”
As it happens, the founder of Asberry School, John Asberry, is buried in an unmarked grave in the cemetery, Cheeves said. The Asberry School taught Black students in Yoakum beginning in 1930, according to the Historical Marker Database.
Asberry was born in Jan. 1, 1859, to Elizabeth Henry and Isaac Asberry. He died in 1950. He was 91 years old. It is likely he was born a slave.
James Lucas, of Cuero, compiled the African American Cemeteries Database Project, identifying African Americans buried in six Crossroads counties and Gonzales County. All known 730 people buried in the Yoakum City Colored Cemetery are listed in the database kept by the Victoria Regional History Center.
The cemetery is fringed on one side by gentle, rolling green hills. But, the appearance is deceptive. The hills are also a burial ground — for years, the city buried its trash next to the cemetery, Yoakum resident David Mitchell said Thursday.
David Mitchell looks out at a hill that overlooks the Yoakum City Colored Cemetery Thursday on Dunn Street. The hill was molded through years of garbage that was dumped on the land.
Mitchell’s great-grandmother, Sallie May Granger, born in 1864, is buried at the cemetery. He used to go there as a boy many years ago.
“It was sort of nice then. You could see the graves. We would clean our family plot,” Mitchell said. “The rest of the cemetery did not look too good.”
Cheeves showed Mitchell a spot she had recently cleared where she discovered the grave of his great aunt.
“OK, that’s my Auntie Lee,” he said with a smile, bending to straighten her fallen tombstone.
A headstone of George Hall, a veteran of the Spanish American War, lies at the Yoakum City Colored Cemetery Thursday on Dunn Street.
Close by Mitchell’s aunt are the graves of a few veterans, including George Hall, an African American private in Company C of the 25th Infantry Regiment, a racially segregated Army unit that was part of the group known as the “Buffalo Soldiers,” during the Spanish American War. He survived the war, lived to The age of 92 and died in 1971.
The cemetery will be enclosed by a fence with tall gates, the road through it paved, and markers and benches installed, Cheeves said.
She is particular about one marker, at the gate.
“It will say, ‘In honor of the ones who are here and we don’t know their names,’” she said.
Headstones at the Yoakum City Colored Cemetery Thursday on Dunn Street.
