Landscape Information
Located between Church Street and Interstate 495 opposite St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery (1795) this rectangular, 1.3-acre site commemorates a Reconstruction-era African American burial ground. The property holds the remains of 1,711 African Americans, more than half are of children under the age of ten. Operated by the federal government from 1864 to 1869, the cemetery was originally larger, with acreage lost to encroaching development.
In 2007, following a decade-long advocacy campaign led by the non-profit organization, Friends of Freedmen’s Cemetery, the city acquired the property and demolished two structures (including a gas station) erected in the 1950s. The city commissioned local architect C.J. Howard to develop a memorial, completed in 2014.
Framed by a metal “picket” fence, rows of flat rectangular stones flush with the ground plane are located in expanses of lawn. The stones mark the location of graves identified during the rehabilitation of the cemetery. Outside the site, along South Washington Street, additional graves are indicated with white bricks set in the sidewalk.
Accessed from the east by way of an arched entrance, a linear flagstone path leads west tracing the cemetery’s historic carriage route. The path meets a modest rectangular memorial where a bronze sculpture—The Path of Thorns and Roses (2013) by artist Mario Chiodo—is oriented on axis with the entrance. Adjacent to the sculpture are free-standing, stone walls that form an outdoor room. Lower walls afford seating while higher ones are embellished with bas reliefs by artist Joanna Blake. Bronze plaques are inscribed with the names those interred. From the memorial the topography slopes downward to the west, north and south. Parallel to Church Street is a grove of pin and willow oak trees, complemented by an irregular row of the same species along the opposite perimeter edge.
The Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery was included in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in 2002 and African American Civil Rights Network in 2021. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.
