{"id":420163,"date":"2026-08-29T10:40:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T10:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/420163\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T10:40:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T10:40:26","slug":"austin-city-council-grants-historic-landmark-status-to-citys-first-african-american-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/420163\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin City Council grants historic landmark status to city&#8217;s first African American cemetery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bethany Cemetery, located on Springdale Road and dating back to the 1890s, will be designated a city historic landmark.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>                                            &#13;<br \/>\n                                                <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kvue.com\/assets\/shared-images\/icons\/arrow-circle-down.svg\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                            &#13;<br \/>\n                                                This story continues below.&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Volunteers who care for the cemetery say the designation has been a long time coming. For more than 130 years, the site has served as a burial ground for many of Austin\u2019s notable African American residents.<\/p>\n<p>For decades, the Bethany Cemetery Association has worked to restore the site and tell the stories of the people buried there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am a native Austinite, went to Sims Elementary School, lived in this neighborhood my whole life and didn\u2019t realize this was a cemetery or the significance of it,\u201d Spears said. \u201cThese people lived through slavery, emancipation, Jim Crow and for them not to have a decent place to be buried, that really bothered me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Spears and the Bethany Cemetery Association have worked to preserve the cemetery\u2019s integrity \u2014 particularly as new development rises nearby \u2014 and ensure the graves remain protected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bethany Cemetery, located on Springdale Road and dating back to the 1890s, will be designated a city historic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-420163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}