Plano Cemetery

Segregation ran through this ground. Joy Gough reports that the older northern section was divided, with white graves on the north and Black graves on the south, and that the newer part south of the fence is the Black cemetery, still in use. The Douglass Community helps maintain it, and a Dallas Morning News article called it the Douglass Community Cemetery. On March 31, 1874, Joseph K. Klepper deeded adjoining land to the Methodist Episcopal Church, Plano's first Methodist church; the Kleppers kept selling cemetery plots after the church was built.

What the plaque says

Plano Cemetery This graveyard was part of the Peters Colony land grant of Joseph Klepper (d. 1884). He immigrated to Collin county from Illinois about 1845. The burial site contains graves of five Peters colonists, their families, and other early settlers. Through the years many prominent Plano citizens both white and black were interred here. Later it served as the only black burial ground for the community. The cemetery has a strong association with the First Methodist Church. It was adjacent to the graveyard for several years on property deeded by Klepper. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 11 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 16 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 17 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 17 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

• Shiloh Baptist Church — steps away
• First Christian Church of Plano — 0.3 mi
• First Baptist Church of Plano — 0.5 mi
• Plano Mutual Cemetery — 1.3 mi