Good Hope Church Black Cemetery
Site Brief:
Founded: around the 1880s
Location: Hickory, MS
Additional name(s): Good Hope Colored Cemetery
Affiliate group(s):
Newton County Community Remembrance Project
History:
The 119 year old cemetery lies on three acres of land in Good Hope Mississippi, in Newton, County. Research found over 500 burials in the cemetery. In the early 1900’s newly freed Blacks acquired farm and timber land in Newton County in rural Hickory, Mississippi, an area now known as Good Hope Black Settlement. This group of freed men and women, according to the laws of the Mississippi Black code, and what they were “allowed” to do, set out to redefine community and family life. The early settlers of Good Hope, the Salters, Johnsons, Dawkins, Chapmans, Browns, Gaddis’, Rileys, Currys and other families suffered many inconveniences and endured great daily hardships. Slowly as the number of settlers increased the settlement gradually began to resemble a rural community, especially as schools and businesses were established.
Shortly after the turn of the century the black residents of Good Hope settlement were no longer allowed to worship with the former slave-holding white families in the community. In 1908, with the assistance and perhaps the blessing of the white congregation, Filmore Johnson and others were instrumental in establishing Good Hope Black Settlement Baptist Church and Good Hope Church Black Cemetery. The church cemetery is approximately 100 years old, however, all documentation and oral history indicates that the area may have been used as a burial ground as early as 1880. Yet Good Hope Church Cemetery is not the only burial place for the community’s ancestors. Several yards behind the church, what is known by the black community as the “White Good Hope Church”, lays The Colored Cemetery. Where many of the community’s enslaved ancestors are buried.
By the early 1920’s the cemetery was set amidst a different landscape. It was at the “heart” of the community, not far from the small farm houses, out buildings and fields. When someone became sick and died, neighbors and family and friends rallied around to help. Some cooked and cared for the children and other helped to dig the graves and all would help to decorate it with flowers and other things.
In recent years clean-up and restoration is done by the descendants of those laid to rest at the site. On the first Sunday in August, many family members throughout the country journey home to the almost deserted Good Hope Settlement to do as our ancestors did for the past hundred years, to care for the cemetery, and to ensure it will continue to be a scared sited and a testament to Black History for everyone. In 2021, with the help of the Equal Justice Initiative, a memorial marker was placed in the Good Hope Church Cemetery, in recognition of two Good Hope community members who were lynched in 1908 and buried in the cemetery.
