Illinoisan runs Negro League grave marker project

ALSIP — An organization that provides headstones on the unmarked graves of Negro Leagues baseball players has focused most of its efforts at a suburban Chicago cemetery that's been making headlines for a gruesome scandal over burial plots.

Jeremy Krock of Peoria launched The Negro Leagues Grave Marker Project years ago. The Chicago Tribune reports that the group has added headstones for 22 players. Fourteen are in the Chicago area, including 12 at Burr Oak Cemetery.

Krock says he regularly goes to the cemetery to maintain gravestones. That includes those of John Donaldson and Jimmie Crutchfield.

But he's run into some difficulties especially after the scandal became public.

Former employees of the historic black cemetery have pleaded guilty to stacking bodies and digging up remains in a money-making scheme uncovered in 2009.