Lost African-American Cemetery Found in Florida

News March 2, 2020

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CLEARWATER, FLORIDA—The Tampa Bay Times reports that contract archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar to search a parking lot in west-central Florida ahead of a construction project and found 44 possible graves. In 1954, some 350 graves were removed from the site, which had been an African-American cemetery, and relocated to another cemetery. The researchers suggest that additional graves may have also been left behind under an abandoned school building adjacent to the parking lot. They will next excavate near the graves to verify their presence without disturbing them, according to Clearwater City Manager Bill Horne. To read about an unmarked cemetery for nineteenth-century African-American prison laborers outside Houston, go to “Another Form of Slavery.”

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