The Knoxville Re-Animation Coalition will host a public meeting to present the progress design of "Odd Fellows Cultural Heritage Park" and to update the community about the ongoing efforts to rehabilitate two historic East Knoxville cemeteries.

The Odd Fellows Cemetery and Potters Field Rehabilitation Project's Third Community Design Meeting is set for 5:30 p.m., Monday, August 8, at the Phyllis Wheatley Center - YWCA, located at 124 Cruze Street.

The project is a partnership between KRC, the University of Tennessee's College of Architecture and Design, and the community to reclaim the two long-neglected cemeteries, to bring the history of the people buried there back to light, and to develop a design that transforms the spaces and brings them back into the community.

The groups have been working on a proposed design and want to get input about it from community members at the meeting.

The Odd Fellows Cemetery, located at the intersection of Bethel Avenue and Kyle Street was established in the 1880s by several African-American social organizations and served the community for over a century. The adjacent burial ground, Potters Field, is even older, established in the 1850s, and is the place where many of the city's poorest residents were laid to rest.

Both have fallen into disrepair.

The effort to restore the two cemeteries began in 2008. The two previous community meetings were designed to gather ideas from residents about their vision for the cemeteries and to identify focus areas for the rehabilitation.

Those meetings laid the foundation for the current design plans that will be discussed next Monday.

For more information about the project please contact Stephen Scruggs, the co-founder of the Knoxville Re-Animation Coalition at [email protected] or Katherine Ambroziak, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Tennessee at 865-974-3270 or [email protected].