“The people here at the cemetery say my marker is the oldest in here for a black person,” she said. “I don't know if that's true or not but the one thing I do know, I am older than the state of Mississippi. My name is Jesse Hobbs and I was born in 1810.”
Hobbs was a formerly enslaved woman who died in 1856 and was buried at the Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson. The cemetery is famous for being the final resting place for past governors, authors and soldiers.
Cecile Wardlaw is the voluntary Executive Director of the Greenwood Cemetery Association. She says the association wanted to shed light on the lives of Black Mississippians buried at the cemetery.
“People would say, oh, that's the all white cemetery,” Wardlaw said. “I'd say, no, it is not the all white cemetery, and it really just bugged me. It was just wrong, and it seemed to be a very entrenched idea with people who had lived here all their lives.”
Wardlaw says the association has been actively trying to identify Black people buried in the cemetery for the past decade.
“I said, you know, we've got this information, we need to let the black community know,” she said. “So this is our third year to do a tour.”
Reenactors portrayed 12 Black Jackson residents - including James Lynch, the first African-American Secretary of State in Mississippi in 1869. Lynch also helped to form Mississippi’s Republican Party. His Greenwood grave sculpture displays the only known portrait of his likeness. Also included in the tour was the grave of Bettie Marino, a teacher and former owner of the Greystone Hotel building.
Tougaloo student Darren Stevens portrayed the Reverend Marion Dunbar, a prominent formerly enslaved pastor buried in the cemetery.
“A lot of black history is covered up,” he said. “So you would hope that more people would understand, there are black people that have been doing this for a long time. It's not just recent stuff that's happened. They've been doing all of this.”
Tour participants walked for about a mile around the cemetery, listening to stories at each of the chosen gravesites. Kathy Dietrich, who participated in the tour, lives between New York and Mississippi. She says she was impressed with how much information the tour was able to find on each of the featured figures.
“I thought what a great thing because I've been reading a lot about my family history from Mississippi and therefore the history of Mississippi and slavery and the Native Americans,” she said. “I thought this would be super interesting and it was.”
It is believed that people have been buried in Greenwood since 1821, and there are at least 300 unmarked graves throughout.
