Golf club built on slaves' graves😢🖤 sparks debate on how to honor the dead
The discovery of 40 graves on a country club in Florida has focused attention on the south’s unmarked slave cemeteries
The discovery of 40 graves on a country club in Florida has focused attention on the south’s unmarked slave cemeteries
Over the years, neat rows of rectangular depressions along the 7th fairway deepened in the grass, outlining what would be confirmed this month as sunken graves of the slaves who lived and died on a plantation that once sprawled with cotton near the Florida Capitol.
The discovery of 40 graves – with perhaps dozens more yet to be found – has spawned discussion about how to honor those who lie in rest at the golf course.
And it has brought renewed attention to the many thousands of unmarked and forgotten slave cemeteries across the deep south that forever could be lost to development or indifference.
Wooden markers that had identified the graves have long since decayed. For years, golfers have unknowingly trodden through the cemetery.
Leon county was the center of Florida’s plantation economy during the antebellum days and had the state’s highest concentration of slaves.
Leon county was the center of Florida’s plantation economy during the antebellum days and had the state’s highest concentration of slaves.
Just before the civil war, three of every four county inhabitants were human chattel owned by elite white families.
