2 Negro League baseball stars lying in unmarked graves honored with new headstones
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - On Monday, a Rome Monuments crew installed two grave markers in Pittsburgh's Highwood Cemetery.
The two makers were dedicated to Clarence "Win" Harris and Frank Miller, two Negro League baseball stars, who, up until this point, were lying at rest in unmarked graves.
It is not exactly known why Harris and Miller, with some 20 other Negro League players, were laid to rest without headstones, but Sean Gibson, the great-grandson of Negro Leagues legend Josh Gibson and the Executive Director of the Josh Gibson Foundation, says this initiative is about keeping these players' memories alive.
"I know today, Frank Miller is definitely resting in peace," said Gibson. "Now, somebody can come by and see Frank Miller, and that was the whole purpose of the QR code, is that these graves have been unmarked for so long, and if someone comes by, we want the people to know who these people are. The main goal was that we want to give all these players that we know of, a final resting place, and be finally resting in peace. And now, Frank Miller and Clarence Harris are finally resting in peace."
Each marker costs about $1,000 to install, and while the Josh Gibson Foundation is grateful for every donation it receives, the organization was specifically honored when it got a group of middle school students who contributed and were eager to preserve the past.
Such is the story of the seventh-grade students at Ryan Gloyer Middle School, who raised over $800 for Clarence Harris' marker. Three students, Karen Jiang, Fay Baden and Vanessa Simon, were on hand at Highwood Cemetery to see the marker installed.
"We made some posters to raise some more awareness," said Baden. "We sat outside at lunch and made some announcements at lunch, letting everyone know that they could donate."
"It just touches the bottom of my heart to know that our work that we put into this, and the resources we had, could actually do something so great," Simon said.
The Negro Leagues Memorial Marker Initiative has nine more graves to mark and preserve in Western Pennsylvania, and the hope is that this project could not just spread across the state in the future, but across the county, to allow all these Negro League stars to once again come home.
More information on this project and ways to donate to this initiative can be found here.