CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- This is my last Carolina Traveler story. I think it's fitting that this story is about something very close to my heart: healing racism.

This Sunday morning two churches are getting together in a graveyard to do something long overdue.

Standing in the crowd of those two congregations will be two elderly people, Mary Sadler and Willis Cox. Mary is black and Willis is white. Mary's church is all black and Willis' church is all white. They will stand together in that church graveyard over the graves of 58 people with no names.

58 rocks.  58 crosses. 58 unmarked graves.  58 unknown slaves. 

In 1809 the Paw Creek Presbyterian Church was founded. The whites worshiped in the front of the church, the slaves in the back. This was our culture back then. If I had lived then I like to think I would have risen above the accepted prejudices of that day, but I don't know that for sure.  

What happened back then, the way blacks were treated, is tragic and well documented. What is happening Sunday is liberating and righteous. 

Mary Sadler's all black church is Woodland Presbyterian. After the Emancipation it was founded by the slaves from the now all white Paw Creek Presbyterian. In the back of the Paw Creek Presbyterian Church cemetery Willis Cox found unmarked graves. Willis knew from stories he was told by his daddy and grandfather that there were slaves buried back there. Over a period of 200 years the raw field stones that marked many of the graves were moved for one reason or another and 58 never made it back to what was supposed to be their final resting place.

When the 21st century Paw Creek congregation learned this from Willis they decided to right the wrong, or at least try.  They collected money and started plotting to restore the graves, even if they had no idea just who was buried in them. And realizing these long forgotten souls were the spiritual ancestors of Woodland Presbyterian, they called Woodland Pastor Larry Hill.

What started as a skeptical conversation for Larry has turned into a full blown hope that the two churches can step beyond their sad 200 years of shared history and reach across the chasm of fears and distrust into a new relationship -- one that says we are brothers and sisters on the same journey.

A few weeks ago I was privileged to be there in the graveyard when members from both congregations got together with 58 wrought iron crosses and the 1700 pounds of new field stones. Even 83-year-old Mary Sadler insisted on carrying one of the heavy stones to a gravesite and setting it just so. She set down her cane and limped with that heavy stone across the graveyard. She smiled the whole time. 

80-year-old Willis Cox seemed the most intense though. He worked meticulously in the hot sun setting stones and pounding crosses into the earth. He would dig up the grass at the head of each grave and rock a stone into the dirt and pat it into a stable stance. It seemed he had carried with him the knowledge of these graves his whole life and with every stone he set down the heaviness lifted from his soul. He was proud to be part of the group to honor these dead. He told me as he gets older he reflects back on the way blacks were treated long ago in this country and it hurts. He has known Mary Sadler his whole life. The Paw Creek community has always been black and white in his heart and mind. But he knew the history and heard the stories from before his time. 

Willis Cox and Mary Sadler have not outlived prejudice in this world. But they outlived it in their lives. And together with their churches on Sunday they will stand in the graveyard and bow their heads and ask God to heal the old wounds.

I hope you enjoy our story "58 Crosses." We shot it the day they pounded those crosses into the ground and set the stones. 

I'd like to thank Karen Sisk for contacting me about this story and for all her help in setting it up.  Karen, we had enough to make a documentary. I hope the 3 minutes and 45 seconds we put on air will somehow make your point: as long as we're here, there is time to heal.