City documents state, in part, that the project involves excavation of potential grave sites, sifting of excavated material and the documentation of any remains.<\/p>\n
SAINT PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 St. Petersburg City Council on Thursday will decide whether to approve funding for\u00a0archaeological digs<\/a> to confirm graves from an old cemetery that once existed in what is now a parking lot across the street from Tropicana Field.\u00a0<\/p>\n Archaeologists previously used ground-penetrating radar in the lot to detect graves from Oaklawn Cemetery, founded around 1905. Last year, archaeologists did an expanded radar search, detecting seven possible burials and three additional areas of interest, bringing the total number of possible graves in the lot to ten.\u00a0<\/p>\n While ground-penetrating radar gives archaeologists an idea of what might be underground, they use a process called \u201cground-truthing\u201d to confirm graves with certainty. Ground-truthing involves careful, non-invasive digs.\u00a0<\/p>\n RELATED: Crews search for destroyed cemetery in Tropicana Field parking lot as city council approves massive redevelopment project<\/a><\/p>\n According to city documents, \u201cthe project involves excavation of potential grave sites, sifting of excavated material, and the identification and documentation of any remains and artifacts that are found within the Oaklawn Cemetery site.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Stantec Consulting Services, Inc., formerly known as Cardno, will perform the work, if it’s approved. Within 90 days of field work and lab analysis, the company will provide a report to the \u201cCity of St. Petersburg, stakeholders and the Florida State Historic Preservation Officer,\u201d city documents say.\u00a0<\/p>\n Oaklawn was a predominately white, segregation-era cemetery located adjacent to two other cemeteries with African American burials. Those sites, Evergreen and Moffett cemeteries, were established on land that now sits under I-175 across from Tropicana Field. While building the interstate decades ago, workers found bones. \u00a0<\/p>\n RELATED: Florida House minority leader calls on FDOT to search for erased Black graves under I-175<\/a><\/p>\n Councilman Corey Givens Jr. said he is pleased that work on Oaklawn is moving forward but added that he hopes the same care and consideration will be given to Evergreen and Moffett.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTrue equity, I think, will be doing the same thing that we did at Oaklawn \u2014 doing ground penetrating radar on Evergreen Cemetery in Moffett Cemetery to find out if there is still, in fact, individuals buried underneath those cemeteries,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Records show those buried in these two cemeteries were supposed to be relocated to Lincoln Cemetery in Gulfport. There are no available records that show that transfer was completed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Currently, FDOT owns part of the land that made up the footprint of Evergreen and Moffett. The agency has told 10 Investigates multiple times it has no plans to search for the graves. Historical maps show there is some city-owned land that could be surveyed with ground-penetrating radar.\u00a0<\/p>\n There have been no efforts or proposals to search those sites.\u00a0<\/p>\n Florida House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell (D-67) has championed legislation for erased and destroyed cemeteries after the discovery of Zion Cemetery under Tampa\u2019s Robles Park Village in 2019. She previously told 10 Investigates she has asked FDOT about moving forward with a search.\u00a0<\/p>\n “It just seems to me that when it’s public land, when it’s land that’s owned by the state or even the federal government, that should be a much easier process,” Driskell told 10 Investigates in December. “Once we know that there’s a strong likelihood that there are graves buried there, I feel like there is a responsibility of the state to investigate and to give peace to the descendant community.”<\/p>\n St. Petersburg City Council will meet at 9 a.m. on Thursday.<\/p>\n Emerald Morrow is an investigative reporter with\u00a010 Tampa Bay News. Like her on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and follow her on X<\/a>. You can also email her at\u00a0emorrow@10tampabay.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City documents state, in part, that the project involves excavation of potential grave sites, sifting of excavated material…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-178580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}