GREENVILLE — Teresa Madison stood at the foot of her mother’s grave and wept.

Before her lay her family’s final resting place. Her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother. Beyond their graves lay a muddy field, pockmarked by the tread of machinery and scattered with overturned tombstones.

Madison pointed to markers tipped over or split apart since she last visited about two weeks ago, just before a contractor hired by Greenville County began to clear the cemetery of debris.

“I’m pissed and I’m hurt. I’m hurt as hell,” Madison said. “You out here disturbing these people where they laying at? You out here knocking over tombstones?”

She shook her head in disgust.

“They ain't got no respect for these people.”

Greenville County and its contractor deny doing any damage to the hund

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