Freedman's Cemetery

The burial ground was paved over, then recovered. The Texas Observer says the Central Expressway opened in 1949 across about a quarter of the cemetery, and quotes a columnist that headstones became fill. A later widening project turned up the graves, archaeologists found 1,157 burials, and the remains were reburied in 1993. The City commissioned sculptor David Newton for a memorial, dedicated in 1999. One of two intact headstones recovered belongs to Emma McCune, born enslaved on June 29, 1855, and dead a free woman on May 5, 1903. Sources differ on when the cemetery began, 1861 or 1869.

What the plaque says

Freedman's Cemetery This area of Dallas County was settled by former African American slaves shortly after the conclusion of the American Civil War. Freedman's Cemetery, a graveyard for African Americans, was established in 1869 on one acre of land purchased by trustee Sam Eakins. Another 3 acres was acquired for cemetery purposes in 1879 by trustees A. Wilhite, Frank Read, A. Boyd, T. Watson, George English, Silas Pitman, and the Rev. A. R. Griggs, a former slave who later became a prominent local church leader and champion of early public education for the African American community. The community of churches, commercial enterprises, and residences that had developed in this area by the turn of the 20th century was by 1912 a part of the City of Dallas. Construction of the Central Expressway through here in the 1930s virtually eliminated all physical above-ground reminders of the cemetery. Descendants of persons buried here and the City of Dallas agreed in 1965 to establish the Freedman's Memorial Park and Cemetery at this site. Beginning in 1989 representatives of the community worked with the City of Dallas and the Texas Department of Transportation to preserve the historic Freedman's Cemetery site prior to highway expansion. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 1.1 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 1.8 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 2.0 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 2.3 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Greenwood Cemetery — 0.4 mi
• Dallas Symphony — 1.0 mi
• City of East Dallas — 1.1 mi
• Grace United Methodist Church — 1.2 mi