Volunteers will continue cleaning Mississippi City Cemetery on Sept. 26, restoring the burial ground to preserve its history and serve the Gulfport community.
Unmarked headstones and overgrown grass have made graves difficult to identify, erasing connections to ancestors and local history. The Southern Miss Anthropology Society and the Historical Society of Gulfport have worked for years alongside Pass Road Elementary School to document and clean the cemetery. Officials said the site still needs community support and resources to honor the dead and preserve its historic significance.
Dr. Marie Danforth, organizer of SMAS, said much of the challenge in preserving the site comes down to coordination and funding.
“Often there are many residents who are willing to participate, but you have to be able to organize the efforts and teach them how to safely conserve the headstones,” Danforth said. “There is also the issue of purchasing the special materials that are involved in the work.”
Danforth said one of the most meaningful aspects of the project has been working with children involved in the cleanup.
“…When you talk with the kids about the cemetery work, the amount of knowledge they bring to the project is impressive,” she said. “They obviously have been working hard with their teachers about how the history of a community is reflected in its cemeteries, and it is so enjoyable to see when they become excited to see that history reflected in an actual headstone.”
USM graduate student Titus Desjardin said a desire to give back to the community inspired his participation.
“I saw it as an opportunity where I could get involved in something,” Desjardin said. “I knew that it was something that would be good in terms of benefiting the local community because cemeteries are places where there tend to be a lot of history.”
Emely Zylka, vice president of SMAS, said the project helped her learn more about Gulfport.
“I’ve learned a lot, actually, like the history of the Mississippi Gulf,” Zylka said. “I am not from here; I am from Texas. So, I didn’t know a thing about who lived on the Gulf or when. I didn’t actually know like the cities down there were so old because a lot of Gulfport—I guess it used to be Old Mississippi City—I did not know that they were pre-Civil War. I thought other people living down there moved in recently. So, just the history of all of it is pretty cool.”
Zylka said she hopes the community will recognize the cemetery’s historical significance.
“I hope it helps them understand, like, value more the history of where they grew up because it’s a really old cemetery and a lot still…a lot of families that live there are still related to people who are buried there,” Zylka said. “And so, really, I hope that with the project, help them, the kids especially really understand the valuable connection that they have with the people that are buried there, like, just the importance of the cemetery in general.”
