JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville park and community center may be sitting on top of as many as 600 unmarked graves, and there is no proof the bodies were ever moved before the land was developed. Now, state funding is on the way to find them.
The land in Durkeeville was once Mount Herman Cemetery — Jacksonville’s first large cemetery for the Black community following emancipation, established in the 1880s. The people buried there included families, soldiers from LaVilla, and the formerly enslaved.
From cemetery to community center
Use of Mount Herman Cemetery began to decline in the early 1900s, when the cemetery district for African Americans moved to Moncrief. The Mayor of LaVilla, Francis LeEngle, originally established the cemetery. A private owner — likely one of his descendants — later sold the land to the city. As Interstate 95 was being built nearby through Sugar Hill and Wilder Park, the city needed additional park space and chose the Mount Herman Cemetery land. Emmett Reed Community Center was built on the site in the 1960s.
The cemetery has been a park for roughly 50 years. Community members who grew up in the area remember it well.
The number keeps growing
Ennis Davis, an urban planner and co-founder of Community Planning Collaborative, is part of the research team hired to work with the city on honoring the cemetery alongside other revitalization projects in Durkeeville, a historically Black community…