On Sunday, a Lexington County church held a rededication ceremony for the St. Michael African American Cemetery—a historical burial ground established for enslaved persons. Descendants of the enslaved persons buried at the site, churchgoers, and members of the community came out to celebrate the rededication of this burial ground with a service, concert, and reception.
One of those descendants was Pamela Redmon Smith. Smith’s great-grandfather, Belton Spann, is among those buried. Spann died after emancipation as a free man. From her mother, Smith says she’s heard many stories throughout her life of Spann, who she describes as a voter and property-owner. Part of his property on Lake Murray Drive is now a Wendy’s.
Smith says learning where her great-grandfather was buried felt spiritual.
“What it means [for me] is connection,” she says. “I feel like we need to continue to connect to our ancestors and finding where they’re buried. It gives us a sense of really [knowing] who we belong to. [It’s] overwhelming to know that. [It’s] like, okay, these [people] are the foundation. That’s who they are, the foundation.”
For St. Michael's Pastor Frank W. Anderson, Sunday’s rededication ceremony is about reconciliation.
“Reconciliation is not pretending that the past was less painful than it was. It’s not asking descendants to forget the suffering of their ancestors,” he says. “True reconciliation begins with truth. [It] acknowledges wrongdoing. It seeks justice where injustice has endured, and it creates relationships in which dignity, trust, and mutual responsibility can grow.”
Anderson discovered the cemetery after his daughter went on a run.
“There are no written records of this cemetery at all,” Anderson says. He says the initial goal was to clear any underbrush present, but the scope of the restoration became more apparent. “We saw the neglect of the actual tombstones, [and] we didn’t have [an] idea of how many graves there were. We didn’t even know the boundaries of the graveyard.”
St. Michael was established in 1812 by Reverend Godfrey Dreher, supported by his father Layman John Dreher, one of the largest slave-holders in the Lexington district. John Dreher sought permission from the North Carolina Synod to evangelize the enslaved African Americans in the area around the church.
These enslaved parishioners were included in worship by having access to the balcony of the church through a separate door. In 1842, the congregation listed 31 women and 27 men on their ‘Names of Coloured Members’ roll.
In 1869, five men would purchase land to found Pleasant Spring. One of the founding Elders, July Spence, is buried in the cemetery.
The cemetery was utilized by Black Americans in the community from 1814 to 1922. With the help of archaeologists, a survey determined there were more than 160 graves in all. There are a mixture of headstones, for those who died as freed persons, and graves without headstones or those who died while still enslaved.
Approximately 16 headstones with full names on them and 13 footstones, some with initials, and one fieldstone with hand-inscribed initials at the site.
Since 2017, nearly a decade, the St. Michael Lutheran Church, in partnership with Pleasant Spring AME church, has worked to restore a neglected site. Anderson says workgroups of volunteers, from members of Saint Michael and Pleasant Springs to groups from University of South Carolina, would help pick-up debris. Many headstones were reset with metal-braces to hold them up, a decision Anderson says was intentional.
“It’s going to be here for 100 years,” Anderson says. “And I want it to be here for 100 years. I wanted people to know that these people that are buried here were important.”
Anderson says repairing the headstones opened up a new world and new stories. He discovered founding members of the Pleasant Spring church, members who were a part of Black fraternities, and children who were buried alongside their family.
Pleasant Spring Rev. Marion F. Reeves Sr. says he hopes the cemetery becomes a classroom for truth.
“May those who visit here leave with deeper understanding. May those who grieve here find comfort,” he says. “[And] may all who gather here discover that reconciliation is not merely a ceremony we perform, but a responsibility we carry.”
