Created in 1858, the Evergreen Cemetery provided a final resting place for a multitude of Santa Cruz's adventurers, entrepreneurs and artists. The land was a gift from the Imus family, who'd narrowly escaped the fate of the Donner Party more than a decade earlier and had already buried two of their own. Alongside these pioneers, the community buried many other notables, including London Nelson, an emancipated slave turned farmer who left his land to the city schools, and journalist Belle Dormer, who covered a visit by President Benjamin Harrison and the women's suffrage movement. Join Traci Bliss and Randall Brown as they bring to life the tragedies and triumphs of the diverse men and women interred at Evergreen Cemetery.

Across the United States, groups of grassroots volunteers gather in overgrown, systemically neglected cemeteries. As they rake, clean headstones, and research silenced histories, they offer care to individuals who were denied basic rights and forms of belonging in life and in death. Cemetery Citizens is the first book-length study of this emerging form of social justice work. It focuses on how racial disparities shape the fates of the dead, and asks what kinds of repair are still possible. Drawing on interviews, activist anthropology, poems, and drawings, Adam Rosenblatt takes us to gravesite reclamation efforts in three prominent American cities. Cemetery Citizens dives into the ethical quandaries and practical complexities of cemetery reclamation, showing how volunteers build community across social boundaries, craft new ideas about citizenship and ancestry, and expose injustices that would otherwise be suppressed. Ultimately, Rosenblatt argues that an ethic of reclamation must honor the presence of the dead—treating them as fellow cemetery citizens who share our histories, landscapes, and need for care.