Transforming Delaware’s Forgotten Cemeteries: Illuminating Cultural Landscapes

Speaker: Faith B. Kuehn

Delaware • Ethics • Environment

Cemeteries honor the dead and reflect our values and shared history. This program focuses on the restoration projects of two historic, forgotten Delaware cemeteries—on Delaware Health and Social Services’ Herman Holloway Campus in New Castle—and how those projects offer a reflection of social and environmental values. Who is buried at these sites, and why? How did these cemeteries become forgotten?  

By restoring these cemeteries, we can encourage healing from years of disrespect shown to those buried there, paved over by the interstate. Restoration can also remedy some of the massive ecological damage caused by diverting the Christina River and destroying its surrounding wetland during the construction of I-95.