The sky is crystal blue over Evergreen Cemetery, and a soft wind bears both the burnt-syrup smell of roasting coffee beans and the low moans of distant train horns and the crowing of backyard roosters closer at hand. Houston Texans and Astros mementoes adorn some graves; graves of children are decorated with statuettes of Minions and Mario, Minnie Mouse and My Little Pony; still others, those of adults, stand before offerings of whiskey or beer. The moment we forget them, […] then they are truly gone.”The wisdom of those words is borne out by the larger history of Evergreen Cemetery, one in which Mexican Americans figure most recently, but not entirely. Labor groups and Woodmen of the World: this is Houston’s home of the workingmen’s dead, in short. You won’t catch a whiff of roasting coffee beans there, nor will you hear the crow of a nearby yardbird.

AUSTIN, Texas – Austin city crews and some community members united Wednesday to remove graffiti from more than a dozen headstones at a historic cemetery for Black residents. Vandals defaced nearly 15 headstones earlier this week at the Evergreen Cemetery in East Austin, the city’s first major municipal cemetery for Black people, according to Austin police. East side 😤 Posted by Sarah Long on Monday, September 21, 2020About 12,000 people have been buried in Evergreen Cemetery, including some from the African American community and civic leaders. Black residents had been laid to rest in shared sites before the cemetery was created in 1926. Nyeka Arnold, a co-founder of the local organization Black Austin Coalition, told the Austin American-Statesmen that she was heartbroken and furious after finding out one of her family’s headstones was damaged.