Family wants proof ancestors are buried in Clayton County cemetery
By Chelsea Beimfohr
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ATLANTA, Georgia (WANF) — For more than 30 years, members of the Turner-Dixon family have been fighting to find the graves of their African American ancestors.
“We just want to know what happened to them. That’s all I’m concerned about. What happened to my brothers and sisters? My grandparents? My aunts and uncles?” Henrietta Turner said.
The metro Atlanta family said hundreds of their relatives were buried in a cemetery behind Bethel United Methodist Church for hundreds of years, but decades ago their remains were moved.
InvestigateTV dug into the Turner-Dixon family’s history in a report that aired on Atlanta News First last week. That report explained that in the 1990s a construction and landfill company purchased the church property and cemetery. The construction group then got permission from Clayton commissioners to move 343 human remains to Carver Memorial Gardens in Jonesboro.
Willene White-Smith says her family was never formally notified.
“We knew nothing. Nothing,” White-Smith said.
Documents show that in 2017, the construction company moved another 67 graves.
An archaeological report from the University of Georgia revealed that the Bethel United Methodist Church remains were all excavated and placed in individual 31-inch boxes before being moved to the Clayton County cemetery.
“That’s going to be about the size of a shoe box, so that is an insult to our families. That is an injustice to us. Because everybody wants to have the privilege of going back to sit with their relatives that have passed on,” White-Smith said.
The Turner-Dixon family also told Atlanta News First that the singular monument marking the gravesite does not have the correct church’s name on it.
A lawyer representing the construction company told InvestigateTV that the process was done with dignity and cost about half a million dollars.
The plot where the 340-plus bodies are buried at Carver Memorial Gardens is not very large. That’s why Turner-Dixon family members are skeptical and why they’re calling on county leaders to show them what’s buried beneath the red Georgia clay.
“We will ask questions until we get an answer because we all love our loved ones, and we want to know where they are located,” White-Smith said.
Family members told Atlanta News Fist they would like the county or the cemetery to dig up the boxes and prove to them that their ancestors are buried at Carver Memorial Gardens.
The cemetery and Clayton County Board of Commissioners did not respond to our request for comment Monday.
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