Picnic and Community Conversation on Mapping and Memory Making

Join us at the Historic Evergreen Negro Cemetery for a hands-on community activity that explores mapping as memory and drawing on divination as a way of asking questions of place. Led by death educator and artist, Jaz Henry, guests will consider how landscapes hold memory, what memories it may hold, and seek what may be revealed and explore how places can be mapped, reimagined and remembered. Using reflection prompts and invitations to engage with the surrounding cemetery landscape, participants will create a field notebook featuring maps of the bayou. Together we will spend the morning making, sharing and reflecting with one another, followed by a community picnic at Evergreen Negro Cemetery.

This event is free and open to all. RSVP is recommended.
RSVP here: CLICK TO RSVP (EVENTBRITE)

About Jaz Henry
Jaz is a death educator, artist, and community caregiver born and raised in Houston. Her work centers Black and Brown communities, low-income families, and those often left without support at life’s most tender moments. Through end-of-life education, and legacy work, she offers care that honors both the practical and emotional aspects of dying. She serves on the board for the Death Collaborative, a Houston based non-profit dedicated to creating spaces that invite dialogue around death and dying.

About Historic Evergreen Negro Cemetery
History Nestled in Houston’s Historic 5th Ward Evergreen Negro Cemetery. Located on the west side of Lockwood Drive at IH-10 on Market Street between Carroll Oliver Way, Lockwood Drive, and Sakowitz Street. The cemetery, divided by Lockwood Drive into two sections, contains approximately 5.58 acres out of Lot 7 of the Harris and Wilson Survey (A-32) in Harris County and is believed to be the third oldest African American cemetery in Houston. A.K. Kelly, Fifth Ward resident, businessman, and former slave, Reverend Edward Lee, and Businessman W.B. Zinkey began the process of negotiations to purchase the burial grounds around the late 1890s. The last known burial was around the 1950s. After A.K Kelly’s death on November 26, 1928, he was buried in the family plot in Evergreen Negro Cemetery. The cemetery burials date from the late 1890s to the early 1950s. Those interred in the cemetery include former slaves, Buffalo soldiers, World War I veterans, and other residents of the Fifth Ward and surrounding communities.