Terry A. O'Neal | Historic Preservation & CAACPA
"I have spent much of my life telling stories, giving language to memory, and exploring the lives and experiences that shape who we are. For years, the written word was the place where I did much of that work. Today, it has led me back to the land of my ancestors, where pieces of our history remain buried beneath generations of silence and neglect."
Historic Preservation & Community Advocacy
Writer | Poet | Educator | Cultural Preservation Advocate | Founder, President & Chair, CAACPA
Situated near English Bayou, the cemetery holds generations of African American, Creole, and Indigenous families whose lives helped shape the communities of Chloe, Iowa, and the surrounding LeBleu Settlement. Among those buried there are members of my own family, people whose names and stories have become inseparable from my understanding of where I come from.
My involvement began with a desire to know more about my ancestors: who they were, how they lived, what they endured, and what they hoped to leave behind. That search gradually revealed a much larger history, one that extended beyond my own family and into the lives of an entire community. I came to understand that preserving the cemetery meant more than recovering names or clearing neglected graves. It meant protecting a place where generations of people had left evidence of their existence, even when the broader historical record had given them little acknowledgment.
Through Chloe African American Cemetery Preservation Association (CAACPA), I lead preservation and restoration initiatives, cultivate community and institutional partnerships, coordinate fundraising and volunteer efforts, and oversee public relations and media outreach. Much of this work involves bringing together historical documents, genealogical research, archaeological findings, and the memories passed down through families. Each offers a different piece of the story, and together they help us recover a fuller understanding of the people who lived, worked, raised families, and built communities in Southwest Louisiana.
My commitment to historical recovery also extends to my service on the advisory board of Imagining ANN: Digitizing the Lost History of Slavery in Southwest Louisiana, a project affiliated with McNeese State University. This work shares a purpose with the cemetery preservation effort: bringing greater visibility to lives and experiences that have too often remained at the margins of Louisiana's recorded history.
As a Ph.D. student in Transformative Social Change, I am continuing to examine the connections between historical memory, community responsibility, and the preservation of African American burial grounds. I am particularly interested in how descendants and local communities can influence the policies and practices that determine which historic places are protected and whose histories are remembered.
Although my work now reaches beyond literature and education, I have never considered these pursuits separate from one another. Writing taught me to listen closely, to question what is missing, and to recognize the meaning carried in even the smallest details. Historical preservation asks much the same of me.
Some stories survive in books. Others remain in courthouse records, family photographs, oral histories, and weathered headstones nearly swallowed by the earth.
I believe they all deserve to be heard.
In the News
The restoration of Chloe Historic Cemetery has drawn regional and national attention, bringing greater awareness to the cemetery's history, the families connected to it, and the ongoing preservation efforts led by CAACPA.
Selected media coverage featuring Terry A. O'Neal and the work of CAACPA:
Capital B | KPLC 7 News | The American Press | The Current LA | Louisiana Life
Learn More About Chloe Historic Cemetery
To explore the cemetery's history, follow restoration efforts, learn about upcoming volunteer opportunities, or support the work of the Chloe African American Cemetery Preservation Association, visit the organization's official website.
Terry A. O'Neal, also published as Terry O'Neal and Terry A. O'Neal-Hogan, is an American writer, poet, educator, and historic preservation advocate. She is the founder, President, and Chair of the Chloe African American Cemetery Preservation Association (CAACPA), which leads efforts to restore and protect Chloe Historic Cemetery in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana.