 Warren and Cynthia Krieger |
COLITA, Texas—My husband, Warren, and I became members of the WCG in the 1950s. We worked for the church and college in Pasadena from 1955 to 1996. I attended Ambassador College from 1956 to 1960. When Warren retired, we moved to
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Warren and Cynthia Krieger |
Texas, where I was born and raised, bought a small plot of land and built our home.
I grew up in an almost all black community called Colita. As farm children, my sister and I worked and played with the black children of our community. We went to segregated schools (a word I was not aware of until I grew up and went to California). My sister and I walked four miles to school. On our way to school we walked past the black children’s school, which was about one mile from our house. I never thought of the reason we went so much farther to school. That was just the way it was.
On our way home in the afternoon the black women of the community would run out to the road and give us cookies they had baked for us. My sister and I both developed a deep love for our black neighbors. We felt safe with them.
When I moved back to Texas, we decided to find and visit the black cemetery we knew was somewhere in the woods. I had never been to it. We made our way through the woods and found it. It was grown up in trees and underbrush. Many of the people
 CEMETERY RECLAMATION PROJECT |
we knew when we were children were buried there, but at first we found only a few gravestones. Most were unmarked. To this date I have found 61 markers. We know that there are many more.
Warren said he would be interested in helping us to reclaim it from the growth of the forest. I called the community commissioner to find out where to get permission to do the job. About the end of May we began the clean up.
We have made contact with some of the heirs of the people we knew as children. In some cases they lost their land and homes. They moved to the city so they could find work. No blacks are left in the community.
Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 2004