JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 A Jacksonville park and community center may be sitting on top of as many as 600 unmarked graves, and there is no proof the bodies were ever moved before the land was developed. Now, state funding is on the way to find them.<\/p>\n
The land in Durkeeville was once Mount Herman Cemetery \u2014 Jacksonville\u2019s first large cemetery for the Black community following emancipation, established in the 1880s. The people buried there included families, soldiers from LaVilla, and the formerly enslaved.<\/p>\n
From cemetery to community center<\/p>\n
Use of Mount Herman Cemetery began to decline in the early 1900s, when the cemetery district for African Americans moved to Moncrief. The Mayor of LaVilla, Francis LeEngle, originally established the cemetery. A private owner \u2014 likely one of his descendants \u2014 later sold the land to the city. As Interstate 95 was being built nearby through Sugar Hill and Wilder Park, the city needed additional park space and chose the Mount Herman Cemetery land. Emmett Reed Community Center was built on the site in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
The cemetery has been a park for roughly 50 years. Community members who grew up in the area remember it well.<\/p>\n
The number keeps growing<\/p>\n
Ennis Davis, an urban planner and co-founder of Community Planning Collaborative, is part of the research team hired to work with the city on honoring the cemetery alongside other revitalization projects in Durkeeville, a historically Black community.<\/p>\n
Davis said the scope of the burial site has grown significantly as research has continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe names, that you referenced, over about a two to three year period, we\u2019ve got resources that we can start to check every year,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThis has grown from the 100 and something to about 600 and counting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Initial documents indicated that between 100 and 200 bodies were buried on the land. That number has since grown to approximately 600 \u2014 and researchers say the count is ongoing. Among the known burials: American soldiers, their loved ones, and at least one man whose gravesite sits beneath a sidewalk. A family plot \u2014 the Fagin family \u2014 sits just behind the tree line on the property, predating any development.<\/p>\n
A 1887 map from the State Library and Archives of Florida confirms the cemetery\u2019s footprint before Durkeeville existed as a neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Radar survey will search for the deceased<\/p>\n