From pain to pride and prominence at Oakwood's Historic Slave Cemetery

Down a long, narrow driveway, just before the office complexes and strip malls near University Drive, is a slave cemetery.

There are no headstones, no signs of any formal graves. About all that's here is a gate, a monument, some foot stones, and a marker explaining the significance of the cemetery.

"The black man's name is written in the book of life beside the white man's," reads one side of the monument. "All are one in Christ. Birth, station, nationality or color cannot elevate or degrade. The character makes the man."

Many weekdays, there's no one here except for Vernon Strogia, the keeper of the Historic Slave Cemetery at Oakwood University.

"I've seen about 20 people come here," he says.

And he's been here for about three years, tending to the trees and bushes, sprucing up the grounds at the slave cemetery and Oakwood Memorial Gardens.

He has seen all kinds of people at the slave cemetery - black people and white people, young people and old people and middle-aged people, he says.

Late last week, he saw Seventh-day Adventist leaders from Russia, Australia and Switzerland, among other places.

Read the complete article at http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/04/from_pain_to_pride_and_promine.html .