The remains of hundreds of Black tenant farmers from a former Virginia tobacco plantation will be moved to a dedicated burial ground. The descendants of those buried have spoken out about the decision for the graves to be moved in order to accommodate an industrial park.
“I don’t think anybody would want their ancestors exhumed or moved,” said Jeff Bennett, whose great-great-great grandfather remains are at the plantation. “It just seems that 100 or so odd years after their death, there’s still no rest.”
Despite this happening in 2025, Black cemeteries have dealt with abandonment and destruction for centuries. Here are some other examples of Black graves not receiving the respect and care they deserve.
Zion Cemetery (Tampa, Fla.)
Zion Cemetery, located in Tampa, Florida, is considered the city’s oldest Black cemetery. Its roots can be traced to the early 1900s. Back in 2019, it was rediscovered below a public-housing project. Since then, over 100 graves have been identified. Rodney Kite-Powell, a historian at the Tampa Bay History Center, told “The Art Newspaper” that “Zion was purposefully obscured from the public record so the land could be developed.”
Copp’s Hill Burying Ground (Boston, Mass.)
Boston’s second oldest cemetery, Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, was established in 1660 and is the gravesite for those who lived, worked, and died in Boston’s North End. It is also the burial site of more than 1,000 free and enslaved Black people whose identities remain unknown. Except for a couple of marked graves—including that of Prince Hall and Abel Barbados—evidence of Black people thriving in the city has all but been erased.
Greenwood Cemetery, (St. Louis, Miss.)
In 1874, Greenwood Cemetery was founded in St. Louis, Missouri as the first Black commercial burial ground after the Civil War. More than 50,000 people were buried in Greenwood, including Harriett Scott and along with Dred Scott who famously sued for their freedom. However, after it was sold in the late 1970s, the cemetery was subjected to vandalism and neglect. The Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association has worked to restore the site and identify those buried.
Evergreen Cemetery (St. Petersburg, Fla.)
Evergreen Cemetery was founded in 1905 in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was a segregated cemetery, designated specifically for Black people until expanding into the adjacent Oaklawn cemetery (segregated by section) became necessary. Both Evergreen and Oaklawn operated until 1926 until it was closed and condemned by order of city officials. The city ordinance mandated that those buried at Evergreen and Oaklawn be relocated based on race. The site now sits underneath the city’s interstate 175.
Second Asbury AME Cemetery (Staten Island, NY)
The Second Asbury AME (African Methodist Episcopal) cemetery on Staten Island, New York, was established in 1850. The church was torn down by vandals in the 1880s, leaving the remaining headstones completely broken. The site would eventually be seized by the city in the 1950s and turned into a Shell station in 1963. Nearly 20 years later, it was transformed into a strip mall—though none of the bodies were ever moved.