The continuing fight for social justice is giving new life to community efforts to preserve Black cemeteries. Congress is considering legislation that would create a database of burial sites, and provide funding to research and protect them.
This could bolster cemetery restoration projects across the country, including one from CBS News producer Rodney Hawkins, who is embarking on a journey to reclaim his family legacy.
Deep in the piney woods of East Texas, beneath a roughly 200-year-old overgrown cemetery, is Hawkins' family history and a part of America's buried past.
"I had to work the fields just like everybody else. I had to pick cotton," Carolyn Curl-Hurd, Hawkins' grandmother, told him.
Asked why she picked cotton if she didn't grow up in slavery, Curl-Hurd said, "Well, my dad — that was part of what he did to make a living for the family."
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