For decades, a fence divided cemeteries into black and white in the small town of Mineola, in eastern Texas.
The fence has fallen.
On Wednesday, crews began digging up the 1,280-foot-long wire fence that separated the city’s cemetery, which housed the graves of blacks, from the Cedars Memorial Garden, which housed the graves of whites.
The project was completed on Friday night, St. Paul Baptist Missionary Church pastor Demethrius Boyd told NBC News in a telephone interview on Saturday.
“The symbolism it represents is way beyond the year we are now in race relations,” said Boyd, who is black, “and the perspective he casts is well beyond the time we need to make sure we promote things that are more positive in nature. “
Boyd said he has been working since 2007 to remove the fence. Talks about the takedown resumed a few weeks ago after a funeral for a former African-American FBI agent, and Marine drew people from the outskirts of Mineola, which is about 75 kilometers east of Dallas.
That funeral, combined with the social climate following the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, prompted Boyd to once again seek to remove the fence.
“I started to engage in conversations with other parties on both sides,” Boyd said. “It was a partnership and a conclusion to remove it.”
David Collett, president of Cedars Memorial Garden, told NBC News that the fence has been open for decades. He praised the decision to finally remove it and begin to move toward combining the two cemeteries under one entity.
“I think it is great [that] everyone was talking about it and a solution was found. Now the two cemeteries, we are going to unite, so it will be a cemetery, “he said.” It really opened up a little bit of dialogue, and that’s good. “
Boyd said the reaction has been very positive and there has been a mutual understanding “that this is the right time and the right season to do it in the climate that we are in now.”
He added: “It was not that it was not necessary before, but the importance is even more pressing now because of many things that are happening now at the national level.”
