The story of how we forgot the first generation of free black Americans in Richmond

Alfred Price was born a slave in 1860. It was Hanover County, just outside Richmond. And despite his birth in the capital of the Confederacy just one year before the war, Alfred made a remarkable life. He went from slave to free man to blacksmith to stable owner to funeral director. He served on the board of directors for many local businesses and became a selfless advocate for his Jackson Ward neighborhood. Alfred Price deserved a statue. He got a small plot in Evergreen Cemetery that would soon be overgrown and forgotten.

The Evergreen Cemetery dug its first grave in 1891. It was to be the African American counterpart to Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery, which housed two former presidents (Monroe and Tyler) and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The 59 acres at Evergreen house some of the most prominent African Americans of Richmond, such as Maggie Walker, the first female bank president in America.

The Evergreen Cemetery Association went bankrupt in 1973. The cemetery fell into disrepair, with overgrown paths, upturned monuments, and anonymous graves. Vandals stole bones and caskets from the Braxton Mausoleum. And people dumped tires, couches, and garbage on graves when the East Richmond Road Landfill across the street was closed. Conditions were so bad, some even dug up family members.

In a country that is keen to “never forget,” we forgot. We forgot about the first generation of free black Americans in Richmond. Everyone they knew, everything they did, and everything they were is slowly fading away under kudzu, trash, and trees.

I saw Alfred Price’s grave. The inscription on his tombstone read, “He lived for those who loved him.” May we do the same. May we never forget.

More one-page memos from the American Bureaucrat available at: www.americanbureaucrat.com