Historic preservation can be self preservation, but what are we preserving, and for whom? In Newsome Farms–a stone’s throw from the future site of the Virginia African American Cultural Center–an unclaimed cemetery thwarts Mr. Kirkly and his neighbors from the tidiness they aspire to. What is your relationship with your appearance and your personal safety?
Historic preservation can be self preservation, but what are we preserving, and for whom? In Newsome Farms–a stone’s throw from the future site of the Virginia African American Cultural Center–an unclaimed cemetery thwarts Mr. Kirkly and his neighbors from the tidiness they aspire to. What is your relationship with your appearance and your personal safety?
Soft music with a slow beat
Nichole Hill: Across the street from the site of the future Virginia African American Cultural Center, near Grand Mart on Diamond Spring Road, is a neighborhood called Newsome Farms. To know this neighborhood is to know the Civic League President–
Harry Kirkly: My name is Harry Lee Kirkly, Sr. I try to maintain the living environment. I hate junky yards. I hate dirty houses. I’m a neat freak. I like my rides clean, I get clean, and when I go to work, I’m clean, and I work outside!
Nichole Hill: Harry takes care of many of the senior citizen’s lawns in his community in addition to his own. His neatness isn’t just about a man with too much time on his hands.
Harry Kirkly: I retired from military because I got crushed in the military and got 100% disability and everything.
Nichole Hill: That is a whole different story–but suffice it to say that the injury was a result of someone’s carelessness. This experience cemented Harry’s resolve to always be alert.
Harry Kirkly: When you grow up in an environment where decisions you make in life, jeopardize somebody's life, like in the army, everything you do in the army, you got to watch out that nobody gets killed. Everything I do, when I come out with the traits that the army taught me, I want to be able to see my door, I want to be able to see what's happening to stop any catastrophe from happening.
Harry Kirkly: When I moved here in 2001, it was a mess around here. But as I grew into the neighborhood, per se, and learned what was going on, and by me being from a disciplined family and a military situation. I said no, I just can't live here and sit back and watch this mess go on. So if you go and ask anybody that out in this area, when I stepped up to the plate, and got involved, everything change all the way up to this point, now what you see. This is one of the most beautiful neighborhoods now. Houses we're going for $529,900, right by me right down next door two of them sold around the corner for the same price a little more. The big beautiful one over here is going up on the block for five something. I bought this for $112,000 in 2001. I'm on the corner! I got more land than this half a mil. back here do. Do you think I ain't happy? Shoot, I ain't going nowhere. (laughs)
Nichole Hill: Care for his community looks like home cooked meals served at neighborhood parties, and safety lessons taught in the civic league. He has a taser ready to give you if you don’t have any protection. And that love extends to how he keeps the yards he cares for.
But there is one space that is still giving him problems.
sound of lawn mower
Harry Kirkly: We have a cemetery in the community on Daniel Smith,
Nichole Hill: Daniel Smith, was the son-in-law of one of the original founders of the Newsome Farms neighborhood. The land was originally purchased by five formerly enslaved men in 1869.
The main road running through the neighborhood now is named after him, and leads directly to the cemetery.
Harry Kirkly: And he set that area aside for people that lived in the community could be buried there. So they have a, like a place where they can stay in the neighborhood and right around their families.
And uh, we have a lot of military members was buried there. Lot of people–family members from this neighborhood was buried there. So what we're trying to do is to get it on the, uh, National Register as a Historical Site due to the fact of all the veterans, back in the 1800s all the way up to, Vietnam is buried over there.
Nichole Hill: Some of the founding members of Newsome Farm are also buried there. The cemetery is nestled into the heart of the community, but surrounded on three sides by roads.
Harry Kirkly: When they put that road through there, they name it Daniel Smith. So Mr. Smith gave that part of land to the community. But it was a bigger plot of land as we found out. And the house right beside it was separated from that cemetery and sold off and left that plot where the burial ground was. And nobody ever claimed it.
And when he sold that lot to somebody, whoever it was back in that day, that cemetery was right on with it. But when they surveyed it and split the property up, they forgot about the cemetery. He took his property over here, but left the cemetery then Mr. Smith, never re-established for the cemetery to put it in writing. He still owned it.
So now the cemetery been sitting over there for years. Ain't nobody owned it. Nobody wanna claim it.
Jackie (producer): Off a technicality.
Harry Kirkly: A technicality back in the day.
Nichole Hill: So, since nobody owns it, the community is left asking: Whose responsibility is it to take care of it? And who pays for that work?
Harry Kirkly: So the city is gotta take it over a church, gotta take it over, the Civic League, gotta take it over. Somebody gotta own that piece of land in order to get on the national register. And to get the funding we need to maintain it. And so we are working with the City of Virginia Beach to get it done.
And the paperwork's gotta follow up because it's coming from the city, or the state or whatever. So you gotta justify why to pay this money here. And everythings about–everything's a paper trail. And then everything leads back to, okay, this, this Black community over here has this historical cemetery. It gets this X amount of dollars each year for maintenance.
Sound of raking leaves
Black communities didn't get a lot of revenue from the city cause they was a target community. They're black communities, So like Burton Station and Black Water, uh, bay or wherever they, they really, uh, called that over there with the airport bought for the black families and all like that.
Nichole Hill: Twelve neighborhoods in Virginia Beach were declared Target communities after they were left behind in the white real estate boom of the 1960’s.
While resources poured into other communities, Harry’s neighborhood had to wait until the 90’s. And they are still working on getting resources to care for the cemetery.
Harry Kirkly: But the thing was, when they let it go like that for years, this just became, hey, nobody cared. Now that we have got in this community and, and established a foothold in this community, we are trying to rectify all the things that should have been done eons ago.
And it's, it is hard due to the fact now because with the historical society and, and, and all like that, you have to have your duckies in line in order for them to give you the funds,
We, we done, started something that we gotta see through because still, it's in our neighborhood. Still. It's gotta be maintained and y'all am not paying me to maintain it. I maintain it because, hey, it's in my neighborhood, but I pay my men to help me to do it. So, I mean, it's, it's not fair to me, but I don't worry about that. At least I am able to do it and don't have to worry about the overall financial consequences of it.
It’s important to me, for one it’s in my neighborhood, in my community. Two, it’s an eyesore for people that come in and out of here if nobody’s maintaining it. Eventually it’s gonna be like a big sore on the community. Like “Hey, why isn’t somebody taking care, mowing the grass, doing this, doing that” And I don't wanna wait till people go around, knocking door to door, "Why don't we--." I go and do it. Cause, I don’t like to see it like that.
Cause I’m a neat freak for one.
And I take pride in what I do. And by me being the president of the Civic League, a lot of people look up to me like, why ain't he having somebody take care of that, you know?
Slow beat music
You gotta be open-minded and look at the, the long range picture of a neighborhood if you want that neighborhood to survive. And that's my take on it. And that's what I fight for.
Nichole Hill: Visit our website Truthbetoldcommunity.com to find out ways to get involved, and share this episode with friends.
This series was written by Jackie Glass and Hannah Sobol, edited and hosted by me, Nichole Hill, Sound Design by Trendel Lightburn and our work has been supported by the Virginia African American Cultural Center through a grant from Virginia Tourism Corporation. Follow our work by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. We couldn’t do this without people brave enough to share their experiences, so thank you Mr. Kirkly!
Harry Kirkly: See I can’t mess up my nails girl. Yes ma’am. My toes too, same way. Shoot. I get a pedicure, a manicure, and I can’t mess them nails up. Lady just done mines, and she cut my cuticles back a little bit too far, but I’ll tell her next time “If you can’t see, you don’t work on me.”