When Briayna Cuffie takes people on a tour of Brewer Hill Cemetery near downtown Annapolis, she reminds them to wear sturdy shoes.

The ground is uneven, the landscaping overgrown. And hidden among the brush, in places, are gravestones that have gone untended so long they’ve sunk into the ground or fallen over.

Just next door, the perfectly manicured, professionally maintained Annapolis National Cemetery is a sharp contrast.

“In the most candid way, it’s a slap in the face,” Cuffie said. “It is also a visual reminder of how America has always felt about Black people.”

Cuffie, a federal employee who used to work for Historic Annapolis, has played a major role in recent efforts to increase interest in Brewer Hill Cemetery, which sits along busy West Street on the edge of downtown Annapolis. A descendant of people who are buried there, Cuffie grew up in the area. She said she’s always known the cemetery to be overgrown.

“No matter how far we’ve come legally, there are still stark reminders, on one of the main thoroughfares of the entire city, of how the city, the county, the state, the country, feels about Black people,” she said.

The cemetery is steeped in local and national history. But like other historic — and predominantly nonwhite — cemeteries across the state, it’s at risk of falling further into disrepair.

Reginald Harris Sr., the president of the Brewer Cemetery Hill Association, said it’s “an old cliché,” but in order to know where you’re going, you have to know where you came from — so it’s important to preserve the cemetery’s local history.

“These people sacrificed a lot,” he said. “It’s our duty to maintain it in a fashion that’s deserving of our ancestors.”

Buried history

Some of Brewer Hill Cemetery’s oldest markers date to 1848.

It’s named for Circuit Judge Nicholas Brewer. One of his sons, Nicholas Brewer III, sold the land to 11 Black men in 1884 for $758. They incorporated it as the Peoples Brewer Hill Cemetery Corporation of Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

Those buried there include former city officials, hundreds of veterans, and key figures in Black American history.

Carrie E. Snowden, one of the founding members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, was buried at Brewer Hill in 1948.

Wiley H. Bates, who was born into slavery and elected to the Annapolis City Council in 1897, is also buried there. His legacy includes donating $500 toward building Anne Arundel County’s first all-Black high school. The school is now the Wiley H. Bates Legacy Center and home to a senior community.

Carl Snowden, a civil rights activist and former Annapolis alderman, sees great historical significance in the site. It’s important, he said, to preserve that history. He’s not aware of any personal family connection with any of the Snowdens buried at Brewer Hill.

“History is an interpretation of the past,” said Snowden, adding that all memorials are in some ways aspirational.

He recalled that at one time, Black veterans couldn’t be buried at Annapolis National Cemetery.

National cemeteries — like the U.S. military — were segregated until President Harry S Truman ordered integration in 1948.

Mary Naylor, who was hanged in 1861 for allegedly murdering her enslaver, is believed to be buried at Brewer Hill, though her grave has not been found. She died professing her innocence. John Snowden, who was executed in 1919 for allegedly attacking a woman, is buried in a marked grave there.

He, too, said he did not commit the crime. The day after his death, The Evening Capital received an anonymous letter that said: “I am sorry you killed Snowden today. He is not the guilty man. I am the guilty man,” according to The Baltimore Sun.

Brewer Hill Cemetery is also home to veterans from the Civil War, both world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Part of the cemetery, likely a mass grave, is also the resting place for some who died in an early 1900s smallpox epidemic and those who were too poor to afford to be buried elsewhere.

Annapolis National Cemetery shares some history with Brewer Hill.

One of the 14 national cemeteries established by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, the Annapolis landmark originally was leased for 99 years from Brewer, then sold to the federal government outright by his heirs.

The national cemetery and Brewer Hill also share a property line, but little else.

Brewer Hill depends on volunteers and fundraising for its maintenance. The grass grows high in the summer and leaves blanket the property during autumn.

Headstones in Brewer Hill are bunched together, not often in straight lines or rows. Many have been lost to time. A 2021 survey using ground-penetrating radar showed unmarked graves in the cemetery, Cuffie said.

“There is clearly a discrepancy between the number of people interred and the number of headstones,” she said.

In the national cemetery, neat rows of headstones rise up the slope of a hill. None of its headstones have toppled or sunk into the ground. One mid-November day, several trucks were on site, doing repairs and maintaining the grounds.

Almost every week, volunteers gather at the Maryland State Archives to pore through records, working on a list of those buried at Brewer Hill by examining death records.

Harris said they’ve so far identified more than 3,000 people buried there. The association plans a memorial wall on the grounds to list the name of every person interred there.

They also want to build a columbarium to hold cremated remains because Brewer Hill does not have any more room for burials. It would become a source of revenue for the association, Harris said.

Preservation efforts

Cuffie thinks that if Brewer Hill were a predominantly white cemetery, it never would have fallen into disrepair.

“It’s a reminder, I think, to my people, to Black people, of we have no one to count on but ourselves,” she said.

About a year ago, she began collaborating with Historic Annapolis to lead tours at the cemetery and said they’re planning to do more in the future. But it feels at times like the Annapolis community is “playing catch up,” she said.

“It’s a community failure. It’s a broader failure of society.”

In an emailed statement, Karen Theimer Brown, president of Historic Annapolis, said the cemetery holds a “vital record of the city’s Black community history.”

“The preservation of this sacred space is critical as a site of memory and a tangible part of Annapolis history for all residents,” she wrote.

Today, the cemetery is entirely under the care of the cemetery association. Its leaders and volunteers have been raising money to preserve the site.

The association set up an online donation portal and is trying to secure grants from the state and other organizations, Cuffie said.

That includes a $250,000 grant from the Maryland Historical Trust that the state Board of Public Works will vote on later this month. That money’s for capital improvements, like building a retaining wall, repaving the cemetery’s driveway and conserving grave markers.

Calynn Offer-Evans, who volunteers to help with grant writing, said the cemetery association also received a $5,000 grant from the Chesapeake Crossroads Heritage Area to improve its website and host an event on Maryland Day.

The grants, Offer-Evans hopes, are just the beginning. As more people learn about the cemetery and get involved, she said, the association can reach “sustainability” — meaning the grounds won’t fall into disarray, headstones will be preserved and other infrastructure will last.

She said the association wants to make sure that ”those who are interred there are buried with dignity.”

Like Cuffie, Offer-Evans has family members buried at Brewer Hill.

“We have to come together as a community to preserve the history,” she said. “You cannot count on someone to write it down for you.”

The Banner’s Darreonna Davis contributed to this article.