Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – The stories of six people of note buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery will be told during the Sangamon County Historical Society‘s annual Cemetery Walk Sunday afternoon, Oct. 4, from noon to 3:30.

At a news conference Wednesday morning announcing the walk, Kathryn Harris (pictured) – portraying Josephine Snowden Meek – said Meek’s “story is one of racism and grades,” as her grades “suspiciously” declined enough to cost her the honor of being valedictorian of her class at Springfield High School. Her granddaughter is Dr. Victoria Nichols Johnson, a retired OB-GYN known as “Dr. Mom.”

Walk chairwoman Susan Helm calls the event “our gift to the city.”

The other historic people depicted this year are:

  • Elizabeth Graham, a Springfield High School teacher described as a mentor of Vachel Lindsey
  • John L. Lewis, a forty-year president of the United Mine Workers
  • Augusta Senf, mother of three or four children who died in infancy; her grave is near several children’s
  • Joe Gomes, a vaudevillian and minstrel performer who earlier was a circus balloonist
  • Robert Preston Taylor, the first Black to graduate from Lincoln College of Law