Holt Cemetery has been filled to capacity many times over; each gravesite has been used for dozens of burials
Brady is a genealogist, specializing in tracing the ancestries of Black families in New Orleans. Cemetery records and gravestones are central to her work. “Burials aren’t just a way of giving dignity to the dead,” she says. “They’re also a way of remembering, of etching these families’ stories into stone.” In Holt, though, memorials have no guarantee of permanence. According to Warren Ernest, who has been the primary gravedigger in the cemetery for 40 years, Holt is “one of the cheapest places in this world to bury a body.” For some of the city’s poorest residents, it is the only option, costing about 20 percent of the most affordable alternative. The cemetery has been filled to capacity many times over; each gravesite has been used for dozens of burials. Whenever a new burial needs to be made, Ernest digs up any grave that appears “untended.” If a family like Brady’s leaves the area for a brief period—as so many did after Hurricane Katrina in 2005—they may return to find that the graves of their ancestors have been dug up, with no documentation that they were ever there... ...Though Ernest has been working as a gravedigger at Holt since 1980, when he was in high school, he is no longer employed in any formal capacity, and receives no benefits or compensation from the city. He digs the graves with a shovel, sometimes in hundred-degree heat. Families pay him in cash. Ford views these informal employment practices as further evidence of the city’s longstanding neglect of the cemetery. “The story of Holt is in many ways a story of mistreatment of Black bodies,” she says, “from the people buried there to the men that do the digging.”
This is the cemetery "The Bone Stealing Witch" stole from. it was a predatory act of antiblack racism and classism, but it is unfortunately not a unique story, nor it is the only way Holt Cemetery, its staff, its residents, and the families of the deceased have faced decades of violation, both personal and systemic.
Gaynell Brady is the vice president of the Louisiana Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, which among other things educates families on how to prevent grave reuse in Holt. If you would like to make a donation to the AAHGS you can here. Our Mammy's Holt preservation, protection, and education project can be found here.
