MOULTRIE, Ga. — The loss of more than 2,000 graves represents a failure on the part of the community, speakers said on Saturday, but their discovery and the dedication of the area where they were found represents an opportunity to come together and move forward.

John Strong Jr., who was hired in September as caretaker of the St. James Pallbearers Cemetery No. 1, started finding the graves in December as he cleared away a section that had become overgrown.

Strong said a tree had grown close to power lines and had to be cut down. He was digging up the root of the tree when he hit concrete — a headstone that had been buried.

“A couple feet over we found another one, and another one,” he told the people assembled for a ceremony Saturday morning to dedicate that section of the cemetery as a Field of Honor.

In all, Strong and his crew found more than 2,000 graves there, he said. Some have headstones, and some don’t. Among those with headstones, engraved dates stretch back to the 1800s.

Strong called Luke Strong III, owner of Luke Strong and Son Mortuary and co-owner of the cemetery, to show him what he’d found. Luke Strong, who is also John Strong’s cousin, told him to do whatever he needed to do to find the graves and put them in proper condition.

“I walked through the woods and here and there I saw pieces of headstones,” John Strong said. “… You can’t dig anywhere out here without digging up a human skull or … bone.”

Research into records wasn’t much help, he said. On city maps, the area south of a paved path is labeled “St. James Pallbearers Cemetery No. 1,” but the area north of that path is just labeled “Wooded Area.” Most of the graves were found in that wooded area, which looks to be larger than the section south of the path.

The identities of many of the people buried in the cemetery will never be known. Either their graves lacked headstones or the headstones bear no inscription. Some graves farthest from the path have collapsed, and John Strong said some of the bones crumbled if the workers touched them.

“What happened out here is called failure,” he said. “We as a community failed these people.”

He said the condition of the cemetery was a reflection of a separation within the community: black nursing homes and white nursing homes, black cemeteries and white cemeteries, and on and on.

“The community must stand together,” he said. “When the community does not stand together, this is what you get.”

John Strong suggested placing wooden crosses on the unmarked graves, and the Rev. Cornelius Ponder, pastor of Greater Newton Grove Cathedral, responded with a truckload of boards donated by his church.

Ponder, who is also a Moultrie city councilman, offered a prayer during the ceremony, and he spoke about the importance of knowing history.

“History is inescapable,” he said. “Whatever has been done will always come back up.

“History takes the past and makes it equivalent to the present,” he said. “Anybody who does not know history has to learn again.”

Luke Strong offered praise to his cousin, saying John Strong had been working in the cemetery 10 or 12 hours a day, seven days a week, since discovering the lost graves.

“He has dedicated his life for the last two months to preserving as much history as he can,” Luke Strong said.

The funeral home director announced he would assemble a committee to research and preserve as much as possible about the history of African-Americans — and all people — in Colquitt County. He said more details would be forthcoming.

He also said Mercer University’s doctoral program had reached out to him in hopes some of the university’s graduate students could base their theses and dissertations on research at St. James Pallbearers Cemetery.

Earlier in the program, Ponder had noted that media across the country had been covering the discovery of the graves, and Luke Strong echoed that newspapers from Washington, D.C. and Seattle, Wash., had called him about it.

“Because of this project, it has touched the world,” he said.