A plane flew over the memorial service of singer Florence Mills in 1927, dropping rose petals as she was laid to rest at New York’s Woodlawn Cemetery. Thirty years later, 150,000 people lined the sidewalks of Harlem in 1958 to see musician W.C. Handy’s processional as his remains traveled there. Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Cicely Tyson, and Celia Cruz are also among the noteworthy Black figures buried at the Bronx cemetery.
Woodlawn Cemetery rivals the population of a midsize city, serving as the final resting place for more than 300,000 people. As with most burial grounds, there are countless people buried there whose lives and societal contributions are lesser known.
In July, the 400-acre cemetery was awarded a $50,000 grant from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund to honor figures from the Harlem Renaissance who are buried on the grounds. The “Where Harlem Rests” series is designed to honor pioneers who thrived in business, entertainment, social organizations and beyond.
This year, the Action Fund granted 30 sites between $50,000 to $155,000, totaling $3 million. The fund was launched by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2017. Two of this year’s recipients were cemeteries. Pierce Chapel African Cemetery in Midland, Georgia, and Woodlawn Cemetery have different stories and unique challenges, but the goal of the Action Fund’s financial contributions to both are the same: to uncover the stories of the Black people who are buried there.
Where Harlem rests
Although the Woodlawn Cemetery was created in 1863 and was never officially a segregated space, Susan Olsen, the cemetery’s director of historical services, credits the expansion of the subway system in 1918 with making it easier to travel from Harlem to the Bronx. This changed the racial makeup of Woodlawn, she said.
According to Olsen, A’Lelia Bundles, great-great-granddaughter and biographer of Madame C.J. Walker, as well as Harlem historian and author Eric K. Washington have helped the cemetery to identify important trends and symbols about Harlem figures buried at the cemetery.
Launching in 2025, “Where Harlem Rests” will feature a series of tours and events that are tentatively scheduled to launch in 2025. Meg Ventrudo, executive director at Woodlawn, said the grant money received from the Action Fund will be used to hire a Harlem Renaissance-era historian who can assist with programming. There will be guide maps and signs to mark the burial grounds of noteworthy Harlem figures and allow people to walk the cemetery at their leisure. Woodlawn will also host virtual discussions with notable authors on the history of Harlem.
Beyond celebrating prominent people from the neighborhood, Olsen said she hopes the series will also delve into the importance of key community figures such as postmasters, grocery store and dry cleaner owners.
“We’ve got this really substantial African American and Afro Caribbean population here at Woodlawn, and that’s why we decided to go for this grant money. It’s time to really get the community to think beyond the Gilded Age at Woodlawn and beyond the jazz greats [to] the folks that made it happen in Harlem during the Renaissance,” she said.
Saving Columbus, Georgia’s endangered burial ground
It’s hard to know when you’ve at Pierce Chapel African Cemetery in Midland, Georgia. There’s no official sign for the burial ground. Instead, tiny flags can be seen throughout the wooded area, serving as markers for otherwise-obscured graves.
“We sometimes replace them because they weather, or they get blown about,” said Yamona Pierce, a Georgia native who suspects she has multiple relatives buried on the grounds. “There are many, many, many more burials that have already been identified in this area, but the flags are just not here.”
There’s a church across the street, and a modern, well-landscaped cemetery just behind the land. But the actual grounds that make up the place where enslaved people were buried beginning around 1827 mostly just looks like a wooded area. Last year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation included the Georgia cemetery on its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. The cemetery was registered as less than three-quarters of an acre in 1840, but Pierce suspects the cemetery was expanded in the decades that followed. She said no less than 500 people’s remains have been identified on the property.
Pierce got involved with the cemetery after visiting with her daughters and an elder cousin who lived nearby in 2019.
“It was not in our frame of reference what the plight is for plantation-era cemeteries,” she said of the emotional visit. “It was just overwhelming, in many ways. It was all overgrown. You couldn’t make sense of the site, where to go to pay your respects [or] to find our third great-grandparents’ headstones.”
The following year, she started the Hamilton Hood Foundation — named after her enslaved ancestors, Jane Hamilton and Owen Hood, who she suspects are buried on the grounds — to raise awareness about the historic cemetery and prioritize preservation efforts.
The Hamilton Hood Foundation regularly works with other organizations in the area, including the Harris County Men’s Club and Veterans of Columbus, to clean up the burial grounds. But Pierce said there is more work to do to ensure the preservation of the space. Earlier this year, Hamilton Hood Foundation received a $60,000 grant from the Action Fund that will help the organization continue their research and project planning phase for the cemetery. The nonprofit’s founder said several environmental issues also need to be addressed on the grounds.
Pierce Chapel African Cemetery was the site of a cemetery workshop hosted by the Georgia Statewide Historic Preservation Conference in October. Brent Leggs, the executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, presented the keynote address for the event in nearby Columbus. During his speech about “the power of place,” Leggs referenced the importance of preserving cemeteries and acknowledging the lived experiences and contributions of Black people throughout American history.
“Not until Black history matters will Black lives matter,” he said.
This history hasn’t always been acknowledged or valued, however. Remnants of an amethyst pitcher and a hoe remain on the property and, according to Pierce, provide a glimpse into the lives and work of the deceased.
She said that when utility companies erected cable lines for broadband access in the area, they bulldozed the area with heavy machinery, destroying or covering many of the gravestones.
“It’s like we’re in a race against time to try to preserve whatever we can at this point,” she said. “There’s been so much harm to the historical and cultural integrity of the cemetery just with the broadband cable lines and power lines.”
Pierce said the property is still owned by the descendants of the Midland plantation owners, who purchased the land to establish a burial place for the enslaved. While people are legally allowed inside the cemetery, the Hamilton Hood Foundation founder said she still gives the owners a heads-up when she plans to visit or host an event.
In the future, she wants the cemetery to be a sacred space that anyone can visit. Fellow descendants have suggested the eventual inclusion of signs, walking paths, and a reflection bench. Mostly, they want to create a burial space that can be maintained in a fashion that offers the respect and reverence their formerly enslaved ancestors deserve.
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