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:
Zion Hill CME Cemetery
ZION HILL CME CEMETERY
FOUNDED: Late 1870s
ADDITONAL NAMES: Zion Church Cemetery, Zion Hill Cemetery
AFFILIATION(S): N/A
HISTORY:
This cemetery is affiliated with the Zion Hill CME Church of Cordova, Tennessee. The church and cemetery have both been serving the historically Black community of Bridgewater for over a century.
BCN Contact Information:
Reverend Gentry
zionhillcme@gmail.com
Mt Carmel
MT CARMEL CEMETERY
FOUNDED: 1847
ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A
AFFILIATION(S): N/A
HISTORY:
Mt Carmel Cemetery is located at the northwest corner of Elvis Presley Blvd. and Elliston Rd. Over the years, the cemetery has been neglected, records lost due to fire, then abandoned. Negligence continues at present.
History of some influential people at Mt Carmel
-Tom Lee, African American, final resting place is at Mt Carmel. He became a Memphis hero on May 8, 1925, when he saved the lives of 32 white people from a capsized riverboat on the Mississippi River even though he could not swim. Tom Lee Park was established in 1954 and a monument erected on thirty acres of the riverfront in downtown Memphis.
-Sam Qualls, another prominent African American, final resting place is at Mt Carmel. He founded a funeral home in 1932. S.W. Qualls was one of the oldest mortuaries in the city.
-Lelia Mason, the wife of Mason Temple and Church of God in Christ (denomination) founder Charles Harrison Mason, final resting place is at Mt Carmel. Mason Temple is where Dr. Martin Luther King proclaimed in his last speech titled “Mountain Top”, on 4/3/1968, proclaimed “something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our World!”
BCN Contact Information:
Samuel Oldham
MtCarmelAlly@gmail.com
Zion Christian Cemetery
ZION CHRISTIAN CEMETERY
FOUNDED: 1876
ADDITONAL NAMES: None
AFFILIATION(S):
HISTORY:
Founded in 1876 by a group of freed slaves calling themselves the Sons of Zion, this cemetery on South Parkway in Memphis was the African American community's major cemetery for approximately 40 years. Zion Cemetery is the oldest African American cemetery in Memphis. The public library has compiled a listing of all persons buried in the cemetery from 1896 onwards. There are likely over 30,000 people buried there on 15 acres. The deceased include, among other notables, Georgia Patton Washington, the first black female physician in Tennessee; Calvin McDowell, William Stewart and Thomas Moss, the friends of Ida B. Wells whose 1892 triple lynching inspired her national anti-lynching campaign; Thomas Cassels, a lawyer who served in the Tennessee General Assembly; Benjamin Hooks' grandfather, Charles; and musician W. C. Handy's infant daughter.
The cemetery was largely abandoned after the 1970s until control of the site was taken over by the CME church and, eventually, the volunteer organization known as the Zion Community Project. Efforts to clean and maintain the cemetery have now evolved into plans for devising educational programming, additional historical designations, preservation, and perhaps some restoration. The site was added to the Register of Historic Places in 1990.
BCN Contact Information:
Zion Community Project
zioncommunityproject@gmail.com