After generations of neglect, once-forgotten African-American cemeteries come into their own

City-owned maintenance vehicles were parked over one African-American graveyard. A gas station was constructed over the other. Together, the two long-neglected black cemeteries represent a lost chapter of Alexandria's history, one that's only now being written. But confronting the unsavory behavior from the past has not been easy, and it's created some dissention among the living.

"It's a sad and shameful story," said Ferdinand Day, one of the city's preeminent civil-rights leaders. "And it shows a kind of Jim Crow attitude that prevailed in this city for many years."