A service project to help Father Dickson Cemetery, an historic African-American cemetery located at 845 Sappington Road in Crestwood, near Big Bend and I-44, will take place February 19t from noon to 3 p.m.
Participants need to bring branch cutters, shovels, rakes, wheelbarrows, gas saws, etc. n anything that will help cut down brush, move it away or help with mulching. It will be important to bring garden gloves. Hot chocolate will be served.
The cemetery is one of the first public cemeteries available to black people in the St. Louis area. Several notable blacks are buried there: John Vashon, attorney, linguist and teacher for whom Vashon High School is named; James Milton Turner, educator and founder of Lincoln University and the first U.S. Ambassador to Liberia; and Henry Lewis, popularly known as “Steamboat,” an entrepreneur and personal barber to August Busch Sr.
Organizer of a secret anti-slavery organization, “Knights of Liberty,” Father Moses Dickson was an abolitionist, minister, educator and activist for black suffrage.