southern cemeteries: starkville's boyd and odd fellows cemeteries

Oktibbeha County has a number of African American cemeteries, including the Good Fellows and Boyd cemeteries, which came into being in part because of segregated burial policies. There are also some actual segregated cemeteries around here, with a fence or wall dividing black and white graves, but I haven't seen one of those yet.

The Boyd cemetery is on the side of a road that runs behind our house, on a large, wooded lot that's squished in between a number of new housing subdivisions. There's no sign marking it -- just some old gates that are always open. A number of the them are falling apart, and some were almost entirely covered with long grasses, but there were still lots of plastic flowers and other signs that people were visiting. I saw grave stones dating to the mid-1800s, and there were a few recent burials, too. 

The Odd Fellows cemetery is next to a busy road in the center of town, and is on the national register of historic places. It's on a big hill overlooking some houses and the playground of an elementary school, which is kind of nice. The names and dates on a number of the gravestones were hand-carved.

My favorite part of these cemeteries were all of the gravestones with photo engravings, which is something I had never seen before.