This article originally appeared in the September 9, 2009 Boston Globe. Used with permission. Copyright © 2009 The New York Times Company

By Meghan E. Irons

As Sylvia McDowell walks through Forest Hills Cemetery, the names roll
quickly off her tongue:

There’s Jimmy “Slyde’’ Godbolt, a local tap dancer whose fancy
footwork dazzled international audiences. A pair of slippers is
engraved on his mahogany headstone. And Wilbert and Beltide Husbands.
He used to head a black-owned credit union on Tremont Street.

There are Butler and Mary Evans Wilson. He cofounded the local NAACP.
Her knitting club made socks and scarves for World War I soldiers.

“I keep finding people,’’ says McDowell, a 74-year-old retired MIT librarian.

McDowell is on a mission to reveal the black history of a cemetery
best known as the last resting place of Boston’s white elite, and to
chronicle the legacy of integration buried among its tall oaks,
maples, and beeches.

The privately owned Forest Hills Cemetery, built as an arboretum for
the dead, sits behind Franklin Park between Morton and Walk Hill
streets. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places for
its picturesque landscape and artistic design. Tall trees shade a
quiet lake, sculptures line its meandering pathways, and lush grass
rolls over its 250 acres. Tours, concerts, poetry readings, bird walks
are held there, and the annual lantern festival draws thousands every
July.

Famous whites are immortalized there in walking tours and educational
programming that highlight the lives of generals, governors, authors,
and other dignitaries - among them abolitionist William Lloyd
Garrison, suffragist Lucy Stone, and the poet e.e. cummings.

“I’ve always thought of it as more of an elitist institution … But
that’s just my personal opinion,’’ said McDowell, the sole researcher
for a project called “Finding Voices in the Silence.’’ She was chosen
for the project because of her research on African-American women.

But local historian Anthony Sammarco, who has written a book on Forest
Hills’ history, said the 161-year-old cemetery has a legacy of
diversity and inclusion that is seldom told. While most of Boston’s
African-Americans are buried at the city-owned Mount Hope and Fairview
cemeteries, there were no restrictions - beyond a higher price tag -
on who could be buried at Forest Hills.

“A lot of people don’t realize that even today it is still an active
cemetery and inclusive of all aspects of Boston society,’’ said
Sammarco, whose book will be released later this month. “It has Asian
Americans, African-Americans, and immigrants buried there.’’

The Forest Hills Educational Trust, a nonprofit that offers tours,
concerts, and art exhibitions at the cemetery, first came up with the
concept of documenting the history of diversity at the cemetery
several years ago, but only recently received funding for the job, a
$3,000 grant from Mass Humanities, an organization that supports local
historical programs.

Because the cemetery has never kept track of the race of the 100,000
people buried there, McDowell has been digging up names up one by one,
by scrolling through the databases at the cemetery and cross-checking
them with the city’s death records, old newspaper obituaries, and her
own collection of historical documents about the local black
community.

When she is not going over the record books, she drives or walks
through the sprawling cemetery searching for history.

So far, McDowell has collected 300 names. She had hoped to get 5,000,
but it now seems that 1,000 is a more realistic estimate. She’ll
present her findings and a brief tour next month. Now, though, she’s
urging the public to present information about their friends and
families - the famous and nonfamous - who might also have be buried in
Forest Hills.

“We are looking for people’s help,’’ said Cicely Miller, executive
director of Forest Hills Educational Trust, which launched the project
earlier this year. “We want them to share their memories here because
our records don’t include race. We want to involve the community in
telling this history.’’

The Forest Hills project will combine interviews of the families of
the deceased with archival research to produce 20 new biographical
portraits that will be used for exploratory tours and other programs.

McDowell said she is curious about why blacks chose Forest Hills over
the city-owned cemeteries. Early indication is that many thought it
was the classiest of the bunch. Other prominent African-Americans
buried there are educator Elma Lewis, Celtics player Reggie Lewis,
Judge David S. Nelson, and abolitionist William Cooper Nell.

“There’s a lot of history there,’’ said Sylvia Watson, who chose
Forest Hills so her husband, Ralph, could rest near other prominent
local educators. “We [as black people] have a tendency of losing track
of some of our most prominent people. That is why this project is
good.’’

Jumaada Abdal-Khallaq Smith selected Forest Hills because she wanted
the royal treatment for her father, Malik Abdal-Khallaq.

“You really don’t think of a cemetery as having a beautiful
ambiance,’’ said Abdal-Khallaq Smith, whose father owned a barbershop
and the Roxbury store A Nubian Notion. “But this is a beautiful place
to lay my father’s remains.’’

Meghan E. Irons can be reached at mirons [at] globe.com