The History of Racism in American Cemeteries

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         Racism against African Americans has a long history in America, and though measures have been taken over the years, the side effects of anti-black agendas by people like Jim Crowe still affect African Americans today. One vastly unknown side effect is the abundance of segregated cemeteries scattered around the United States. 

In Nacogdoches, there are two African American cemeteries that were established by African American churches, Zion Hill Baptist and St. Paul’s. Because of Jim Crowe segregation laws, African Americans were not allowed to be buried in all-white cemeteries and the churches had to create their own. This worked for a time, but unfortunately since the churches did not have the means to pay for help, and depended on volunteers from churchgoers, this made keeping up the cemeteries difficult, especially after the Great Migration. 

Jeffrey Roth, an Associate Professor of Geography at Stephen F Austin State University in Nacogdoches, had to search for St. Paul’s Cemetery in the woods for a year before he could find any trace of what was left of the cemetery. The cemetery was hard to find because there were little public records about it due to it being an African American cemetery, and the city of Nacogdoches has yet to acknowledge St. Paul’s existence. 

“The white community is embarrassed. I think some people would rather forget… or place blame on the people that have been victimized,” said Roth. 

During the Great Migration, many African Americans left southern states to escape racism, and especially the Jim Crowe laws that were still in affect at the time. With most of the African American church members moving to the north, this left the older members of congregations to care for the cemetery. This led the African American cemeteries to become dilapidated, and some to be lost to time. 

“Thousands of black people left Nacogdoches because of discrimination. They left Nacogdoches for urban areas where they received much more opportunity, but when they left by the thousands, they left behind the older population and the older people were no longer able to care for the cemetery, so the cemetery was basically abandoned. When it was abandoned then it started to be desecrated and taken advantage of locally,” said Roth. 

The problem does not just stop with Nacogdoches cemeteries, but there are cases in America of cemeteries that are still segregated today. According to a Texas Tribune Article,  there is a cemetery in Normanna, Texas that would not allow a man, Pedro Barrera, to be buried in the San Domingo Cemetery because he was Mexican. The owner of the cemetery allegedly made racist comments to Barrera’s wife, but later backtracked when the cemetery was sued, and Barrera was able to be buried there. In the same article, officials in Waco, Texas removed a chain link fence in 2016 that separated the “white section” of the cemetery from the “black section” of the cemetery. 

There are far more examples of segregated cemeteries around America, and they all stem from the same problem. As long as America tries to hide its racist background by ignoring the segregation in cemeteries, innocent citizens will still be forced to deal with the consequences of the past.