“I had always heard about Olivewood, but I did not know that it was in the condition that it was in,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe a cemetery in Houston would look like that.”
Margott Williams first became interested in preserving historic Olivewood Cemetery, Houston’s first platted African American cemetery located on the banks of White Oak Bayou, in 1999 after her grandmother passed away.
She vowed to work to restore the site, in memory of her grandfather and all the other people buried at Olivewood. “She introduced me to some more descendants and more people who worked in the historical area. Once we founded the group, we started cleaning the cemetery and got a historical marker for it,” Williams said.
Charles Cook, Descendants of Olivewood co-founder, said the gravesites had virtually disappeared beneath a thick growth of vegetation when he first became involved in work to preserve the site in 1993. In 2008, Descendants of Olivewood was granted guardianship of the site. “We were forced into court to prove that we were diligent about it, to prove that we had a plan for it,” said Cook.
Jasmine Lee, of Descendants of Olivewood, carries flowers to a gravesite in Olivewood Cemetery. The Descendants of Olivewood is a nonprofit that cares for the historic Black Cemetery.In addition to maintaining and landscaping the cemetery’s grounds, the Descendants of Olivewood also sponsors a number of educational programs and projects of interest to historical researchers, genealogists and family members of those buried at the site.
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