Richmond's First Municipal African Cemetery

SA-136

In 1799 the City of Richmond acquired land in this area for its first municipal burial ground for enslaved and free Africans and people of African descent. One of several town gallows was located here. Objecting to this and other indignities, including frequent flooding that disturbed burials, free Black Richmonders petitioned for a new cemetery. In 1816 the City opened the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground a mile north of here. By 1957, Interstate 95 and parking lots covered much of the original cemetery. Beginning in the early 2000s, community activists led an ultimately successful campaign to reclaim, protect, and memorialize the Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground.

Department of Historic Resources, 2023

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Correspondence with Ana Edwards, Ryan K. Smith, and Lenora McQueen. Ryan K. Smith “African Burial Ground,” Richmond Cemeteries: Exploring Richmond Virginia’s Historic Burial Grounds: https://www.richmondcemeteries.org/africanburialground/ “Richmond’s African Burial Ground,” https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=207393 Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project: https://www.sacredgroundproject.net/ Ryan K. Smith, “Disappearing the Enslaved: The Destruction and Recovery of Richmond’s Second African Burial Ground,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, vol. 27, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 17-45. Gibson Worsham, “The Location of Richmond’s First African-American Burial Ground,” Urban Scale Richmond: http://urbanscalerichmondvirginia.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-location-of-richmonds-first-african.html Bryan Clark Green and Matthew R. Laird, “The ‘Burial Ground for Negroes’ Site, City of Richmond, Virginia: An Historical and Archaeological Analysis,” unpublished paper, 2012. Michael L. Blakey, Review of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR) Validation and Assessment Report on the Burial Ground for Negroes, Richmond, Virginia by C. M. Stephenson, 25 June 2008 (Institute for Historical Biology, 2008). Jeffrey Ruggles, “The Burial Ground: An Early African-American Site in Richmond,” Dec. 2009.