SITE DIRECTORY
To learn more about any of the BCN sites listed below, click “Read more” to view individual site briefs. To search for a specific BCN site, use the search bar below:
Plummers Cemetery
PLUMMERS CEMETERY
FOUNDED: Prior to 1898
ADDITONAL NAMES: Mount Calvary
AFFILIATION(S):
Save Austin's Cemeteries
HISTORY:
Plummers Cemetery is a historically African American, Upper South folk cemetery, containing family plots, handmade markers, and examples of art and craft. Plummers Cemetery was likely established prior to 1898, the death year of Jack Jones, possibly the first person interred in the cemetery with a marker.128 The cemetery may have been known as Mount Calvary Cemetery. No map of grave lots has been located for Plummers, and early twentieth century burial dates appear to be located throughout the site. Some family plots were clearly purchased as a unit and occupied over time, as in the other city cemeteries, but the condition or lack of grave markers makes the development of the cemetery difficult to determine today.
The cemetery is relatively small—only about eight acres in size—and burials have taken place fairly continuously throughout the 20th century and into the present day. Plummers Cemetery contains a variety of handmade, craftsman carved, machine carved, and military grave markers. Many of the handmade markers are poured concrete with inset letters and are notable for the content of the aggregate, which in many cases features large pieces of mica, a stone with high reflectivity, mixed into or pressed into the surface of the concrete.
BCN Contact Information:
Save Austin's Cemeteries
President@SAChome.org
Evergreen Cemetery
EVERGREEN CEMETERY
FOUNDED: 1926 (early cemetery founded in 1891)
ADDITONAL NAMES: Highland Park Cemetery
AFFILIATION(S):
Save Austin's Cemeteries
HISTORY:
Evergreen Cemetery was established in 1926 by Austin’s City Council for the exclusive use of African-Americans. It includes a portion of an earlier municipal cemetery called Highland Park Cemetery. Today, there are over 12,000 burials at Evergreen.
When you step into Evergreen and walk among the markers, you are surrounded by the people who helped build the community of Austin. Politicians, educators, businesspeople, artists, musicians, veterans, and laborers. The history of our city can be told by learning about the stories of people buried here.
BCN Contact Information:
Save Austin's Cemeteries
President@SAChome.org
Oakwood Cemetery
OAKWOOD CEMETERY
FOUNDED: 1839
ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A
AFFILIATION(S):
Save Austin's Cemeteries
HISTORY:
Founded in 1839, and containing over 23,000 burials within 40 acres, Oakwood Cemetery is Austin's oldest municipal burial ground. The first interment was that of an enslaved African American man who was killed while being brought into Texas by enslavers. Early burials were in the western section of the cemetery, near the Navasota gate. When the cemetery was platted in 1866, it included the area segregated by race and socioeconomic status. The Historic Colored Grounds lie on the north side of the cemetery’s main road, appearing as a flat green space with a sparse scattering of 300 gravestones. The monuments exist in various states of disrepair, some slightly visible above the grass line, many face down, and others sinking beneath the topsoil. Records indicate that thousands of named individuals are buried within this area and subsections, but no map exists as to the exact location of the burials. Additionally, early sexton’s ledgers reveal entries of hundreds of unnamed individuals, noting only their race or enslaver’s name, further denying the opportunity for descendants to trace ancestry or burial information.
The Historic Colored Grounds hold the remains of most of the cemetery’s African American burials, both free and enslaved peoples, many of whom settled in Austin’s renowned freedom colonies after the Civil War. Among them are civil rights leaders, educators, cultural icons and religious figures influential on local, state and national scales. Some of these individuals have monuments, but most do not. The City of Austin believes that Austin’s historic cemeteries remain vital for the community to remember its segregated past and how the city has changed since its founding. The segregated grounds of Oakwood Cemetery serve as a site of, and memorial to, the ongoing advancement of civil rights, in recognition of the struggle for Black equity over the past two centuries. The individuals buried in the Historic Colored Grounds were subject to segregation and institutional racism in life and death. This is evident in the poor keeping and absence of historical records compared to the rest of the cemeteries’ burials.
BCN Contact Information:
Jennifer Chenoweth
jennifer.chenoweth@austintexas.gov
https://www.austintexas.gov/department/oakwood-cemetery-chapel