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Volunteers honor fallen soldiers buried in forgotten cemetery
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BATON ROUGE- Friends of the Little Misery Cemetery in Baton Rouge held a virtual Memorial Day tribute to the soldiers buried there.
The cemetery, with about 100 above-ground graves dates back to the 1800s, and was a part of an old plantation where many African Americans are buried, including seven veterans.
"Many of these graves have no headstone, so only family members know who is buried here," Ronnie Harris, a cemetery volunteer said.
Harris is the former mayor of the City of Gretna, and is a member of the group who started cleaning the graveyard back in 2017.
"Now we've been cleaning this place for a year and a half and just last week I found a new grave dated in 1907," Harris said.
Even though the coronavirus kept members from holding a Memorial Day service at the grave yard that still didn't stop them. Instead they released a tribute on YouTube, that includes video from a drone, sound tapes, and Ray Charles singing "American The Beautiful" all while showing the graves of soldiers buried at Little Misery.
"We wanted to spotlight those veterans and pay tribute to those who may have been long forgotten," Harris said.
The volunteers are now trying to identify about 75 graves that may include the remains of more military veterans.
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