Zion Cemetery

Zion Cemetery was started in 1876 by Rev. Morris Henderson, founding pastor of Beale Street Baptist Church, on land the United Sons of Zion had bought in 1873. About 30,000 people are buried in its 15 acres, including Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and William Stewart, killed in 1892. By the 1960s it lay abandoned and overgrown. A 1979 cleanup bulldozed the southwest corner and destroyed tombstones until a court order stopped it. The CME Church's General Board took it over in 1985, and the cemetery joined the National Register in February 1990.

What the plaque says

Zion Cemetery Zion Cemetery, comprising 15 acres, was established in 1876 by the United Sons of Zion Association, a group of former slaves who responded to the need for a respectable burial site for African-Americans. It is the final resting place for many outstanding citizens, including Georgia Patton Washington (1864-1900), who was one of the first female African-American physicians, and Thomas F. Gassels (1850-1903), who was Assistant Attorney General of Shelby County and a member of the Tennessee General Assembly.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 1.0 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Elmwood Cemetery — 1.3 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• Sun Studio — 2.4 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 2.9 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• Thomas F. Cassels — steps away
• Stax Recording Studios — 1.0 mi
• Forrest's Artillery Positions -Aug. 21, 1964- — 1.2 mi
• LeMoyne-Owen College — 1.3 mi