Austin Peay ties to the community: Reflection and restoration at Mount Olive Cemetery
By: Khatir Stewart September 27, 2023
On Friday, Sept. 22, 2023, the Austin Peay State University men’s basketball team toured Mount Olive Cemetery in Clarksville, Tennessee. The trip fostered competitiveness and resilience to work together as a team and continue to push on in this upcoming season. This is not the average cemetery; however, these hallowed grounds have a history from the early 20th century.
The land deed swapped through the hands of many during the late and early 20th century, eventually becoming the resting place for many freed African Americans and veterans of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT). While the cemetery hadn’t been an official resting place in the past, many people and families still found their final resting place there. Over the years, however, the lack of maintenance and care for the area caused it to fall into disarray and be forgotten by many citizens of the Clarksville area, including those who rested inside, which is where the society stepped in.
Mount Olive Cemetery Historical Preservation Society is a group of dedicated individuals who aim to bring peace to those who rest within the cemetery and improve the area, bringing the proper memorial to those who served and those who don’t have families to visit them.
The society’s mission statement is to emphasize the influence and contributions of African Americans regarding the history, education, development, growth and culture of the Clarksville, Tennessee area.
Mike Taliento, director of Cemetery Preservation and Restoration, said, “What you’re looking at is a piece of sacred ground that has been dutifully, purposefully and passionately cared for by the society that manages the property and the cemetery.”
The restoration is still a work in progress, Taliento said. The cemetery has been worked on for more than 10 years, started by Geneva Bell, the society’s founder.
One of the issues the society faces in restoring the grounds is determining how many people rest there. With so little maintenance done during the years, many graves became sunken, moved or lost to the growing forestry. The society historian Phyllis Smith said a scan of the surrounding area revealed 1,350 people in the cemetery. With many of those resting there being of poor backgrounds, headstones were a luxury not all had, making finding the locations of those resting even harder. Smith said of the 1,350 interred, “302 civilians and 32 veterans have been cataloged so far.”
Many groups come to Mount Olive to volunteer their time and efforts to help rebuild the foundation of the sacred grounds, taking brief moments of reflection and building teamwork. From Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, fraternities and now the men’s basketball team, Mount Olive offers a place for many to think about life’s complexities.
“These guys struggled,” said Nick Nicholson, society president. “The team will have struggles, and until you get together and play as a team, you’re not going to win as a team. I think that is encompassed in the struggle of everybody who lived their life.”
While the cemetery is still in the process of restoring the resting grounds, they are receiving help not only from organizations around Tennessee, such as the Nashville Predators Foundation, who awarded the society a $10,000 grant in 2022 to help in restoration efforts and efforts to honor the USCT with a statue at Fort Defiance but also citizens of the local area such as Tyler Nolting, the society’s secretary and an assistant professor at Austin Peay.
“The society took it upon themselves to donate a 9-foot-tall monument to recognize the USCT,” Nolting said. “Always remembering them after they’ve died so you don’t forget about them, because plenty of the people buried at Mount Olive will never be talked about because we will never know them. We don’t want to allow someone to die twice.”
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