Washington Park Cemetery

Oct 14

Site Brief:

Founded: 1920

Location: Berkeley, MO

Additional name(s): N/A

Affiliate group(s): N/A

History:

Established in 1920. Abandoned in 1991. 42 acres remain (from original 75 acres). Over 45,000 interments remain (after the "removal" of over 12,000 burials in the 90s for the airport expansion).

Washington Park Cemetery is an historic African American cemetery located in St. Louis, Missouri, just adjacent to Lambert International Airport. Nearly 30 acres of the approximately 42-acre ancestral repository are in a wretched state of neglect and continued desecration. It serves as a generational source of community trauma, reminding descendants of both past and current injustice. The cemetery, which is highly visible from cars on Highway 70 and airplanes landing at Lambert Airport, is the final resting place for over 45,000 people, and for many years was one of few cemeteries where the black community could bury their deceased. Tens of thousands of travelers pass or land on this site daily, unaware of the tragic history and current plight of this sacred ground. We receive calls from families all over the United States looking for their relatives, and we believe everyone has a connection to someone at Washington Park, once a place of prestige and honor. Revered ministers, Urban League and other prominent fraternal order founders, Homer Phillips physicians, Harris-Stowe professors, Sumner teachers, attorneys, activists, funeral directors, dentists, and a Supreme Court attorney were all interred here. Washington Park Cemetery is also the final resting place for many U.S. servicemen who chose to be buried by family members and near the homes of their survivors as opposed to the rather far away Jefferson Barracks Cemetery. Veterans buried at the cemetery have served in the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. With military stones found destroyed throughout the cemetery - that once represented their devoted service in five U.S. wars - survivors are lamenting their veterans’ decisions to be buried at the deteriorating Washington Park Cemetery which has no perpetual care funds.