Female Union Band Society Cemetery
Site Brief:
Founded: 1842
Location: Washington, D.C.
Additional name(s): FUBS, Mount Zion West
Affiliate group(s): N/A
History:
The Female Union Band Society Cemetery was established in 1842 by the Female Union Band Society, a benevolent organization led by free Black women in Georgetown, Washington, DC. Decades before emancipation, these women purchased land in the nation’s capital and created a permanent place of burial, remembrance, and community care. The cemetery is a powerful example of free Black women’s leadership, mutual aid, land ownership, and Black self-determination in antebellum America.
The cemetery is significant to local, national, and international Black history. Those buried here are connected to Georgetown, Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, the wider United States, and beyond. Their lives reflect histories of slavery and freedom, migration, faith, education, military service, skilled work, property ownership, family networks, and community institution-building. The cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and, together with Mount Zion Cemetery was designated in 2018 as an UNESCO’s site of memory associated with the Routes of Enslaved Peoples programme.
Resource links:
BCN Contact Information:
Lisa Fager