The Lawnside Historical Society, Inc., is among 12 organizations in the region selected by the Scribe Video Center of Philadelphia for its Precious Places Community History project for 2006.
The Society will create an eight-minute documentary about the Mount Peace Cemetery on the White Horse Pike in Lawnside, N.J. Mount Peace was organized in 1890 as a resting place for African Americans who were excluded from other cemeteries because of race. By 1952, the association that owned the cemetery went bankrupt and the 18-acre site fell into disrepair.
A group of Lawnside men and women banded together nearly 30 years ago to clean up the grounds and maintain the property as a respected resting place. More than 100 Civil War and 10th Cavalry military men are buried there. Their work continues as the board of trustees tries to recruit volunteers to help supervise preservation of the site. Efforts are underway to have it placed on the state and national registers of historic places.
Scribe Video Center is a non-profit organization that trains ordinary citizens in every aspect of documentary filmmaking, from camera and sound operation to script-writing, interviewing, transcription and film editing. The aim is to promote video as an artistic medium as well as a tool to create positive social change.
In the past two years, more than 30 community-based organizations have participated in Precious Places, creating short documentaries that celebrate and honor the unique identities of Philadelphia and Camden neighborhoods.
Scribe has assigned Professor Neal Holmes of Cheney University as the humanities consultant and Professor Robert Emmons of Rutgers University, Camden, as the guiding filmmaker. E. Muneerah Higgs, a Society member, Scribe center graduate and Lawnside videographer, is coordinating the project.
The Society needs volunteers who are at least 15 years old to learn to operate professional video and sound equipment. Mr. Emmons will conduct a training session in Barrington during the week of April 24. Those who are interested should contact the Historical Society at 856-546-8850 or send e-mail to lhs@petermotthouse.org.
Filming is scheduled for June 17. The finished video may be broadcast on television and made available to libraries and archives.
People who have information about the cemetery or who have relatives buried there are also being asked to contact the Society's research team to aid them in telling the story, documenting the site and, perhaps recreating the layout of the burial ground. Most of its records were destroyed in a fire and many headstones have deteriorated with age, were damaged or missing.
