El Dorado supes agree to remove racial slurs from headstones
By Peter Hecht, Sacramento Bee
Supervisors in El Dorado County voted Tuesday to right a historic wrong by replacing 36 cemetery headstones that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers labeled with a racist slur in 1954.
When the Corps built Folsom Dam on the American River that year, it moved remains from a cemetery in the old Gold Rush town of Negro Hill to a new resting place in El Dorado County. The N-word was stamped into concrete headstones instead of “Negro” to note the anonymous remains had come from the former Negro Hill Cemetery.
But the supervisors’ 5-0 vote to allow a privately funded project to replace the headstones at Mormon Island Cemetery stirred debate.