Bates Allen News Today

Volunteers united March 3 to clean up the Newman Chapel Cemetery and the Oak Hill Cemetery in Bates Allen County Park in Fort Bend County.

Volunteers spent their Saturday cleaning up historically Black gravesites in Fort Bend County.

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and Congress adopted the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery in January 1865.

Volunteers spent several hours Monday clearing a path to hundreds of concealed African American graves, some belonging to formerly enslaved people, at a Fort Bend County Park in Kendleton.

Members of the Exchange Club of Sugar Land joined Nick Landoski at Bates Allen Park last weekend to begin cleaning brush from an historic cemetery, called Oak Hill Cemetery.

"Gone, but not forgotten," many graves read. A former U.S. Representative and others are working to make sure thats true.

For as long as cattle ranching and cowboys have been around in Fort Bend County, Black residents have played a central role in that story.