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Starkville Colored Cemetery Field School
2025 Cohort Applications Open Now.

Join us in preserving history. 

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What Students Have Said

Makayla Smith Quote

Joining the project was one of the best decisions I have ever made for myself. Not only have I been able to grow as a student and researcher, but I have a new appreciation for cemeteries and a new understanding of decolonial methods.

Makayla Smith

Taia Bush Quote

This work will introduce you to an abundance of love and dedication.

Taia Bush

Daniel Scheiner Quote

The Brush Arbor field school was one of the major highlights of my life. I learned so much and met some life long friends!

Daniel Scheiner

Recent News

Historic Black cemetery wrestles with trash

Visiting Brush Arbor Cemetery on University Drive over the weekend, Mississippi State University anthropology professor Jordan Lynton Cox was disappointed in what she saw. Starkville’s historic Black cemetery, a site of a field school supported by a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment of Humanities, was covered with litter.

November 30, 2023

Historic Black cemetery project discovers 40 unmarked graves

Jordan Lynton Cox provides updates on the Brush Arbor Cemetery project Sunday evening at the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum. Cox and a cohort of nine students found 81 burial sites and only 41 headstones at the cemetery located on the north side of University Drive. The researchers also identified the cemetery's history and several metal stakes, bricks and stones indicating graves. Cox hopes to use this summer's research as a foundation for further analysis and a digital database. (Grant McLaughlin/Dispatch Staff)

November 30, 2023

Historic cemetery to be preserved digitally

STARKVILLE — On the south side of University Drive, there is a manicured three-acre cemetery, complete with shining headstones and flowers. On the north side, there is another two-acre cemetery, which from the outside appears to be a line of bushes, a single bench and a field full of collapsing headstones.

November 13, 2023

The Work Of Decolonizing A Neglected Historic Black Cemetery In Starkville

STARKVILLE, Miss.— Brush Arbor Cemetery, also known as the Starkville Colored Cemetery, is hidden among trees in a plot of land between the yellow shack that holds Scooter’s Records and the three-story building with Commodore Bob’s restaurant and liquor store on University Drive in Starkville. It is across the street from the far-better-maintained Odd Fellows Cemetery, where ornate stones and statues honor prominent white Starkvillians from the past.

November 13, 2023