Black Cemeteries

Bill sponsor Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, said that after four years of pushing the measure, it has become a “labor of love.”

Nigel Rudolph and others in his field argue that burial grounds serve the living more so than the dead, justifying the need for their discovery and protection. Florida lawmakers are recognizing this in the upcoming legislative session.

Gullah/Geechee community members warn historic burial sites are at risk in Rayonier-owned logging land in Nassau County. Rayonier has yet to share a clear plan for protecting the sacred sites in their development plans for the area.

Royal is a historically Black rural and agricultural community — with a tradition of property ownership in 40-acre and 80-acre land grants passed down from generation to generation. In Royal, the family’s land ownership is everything.

State Sen. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, has said that state archaeologists believe there are nearly 3,000 lost Black cemeteries in Florida.

Only a fraction of the state's cemeteries have been officially located and documented.

It's home to the infamous case known as the "Groveland Four," in which four young black men were falsely accused and convicted of raping a 17-year-old white woman in 1949.

The state senator who proposed a bill to catalog and restore abandoned African American cemeteries across Florida said she is disappointed the legislation died in the just-ended session at the Capitol but isn’t giving up the fight.

The lack of action on the legislation stunned supporters and the reasons for its demise were not clear.

One woman's quest to learn where her ancestors may have been buried led to a historic African-American burial ground believed to hold the graves of former slaves from Welaunee and Fleischmann plantations in Leon County.

While one University of South Florida anthropologist continues her work further exploring more than 40 unmarked cemeteries and burial grounds in Hillsborough County, another is focusing on lost Black cemeteries.

Since the owner of Memorial Park Cemetery died in 2019, the city of Tampa has invested considerable time, manpower and money to protect and improve the grounds of the resting place for Black veterans.