Thousands of free and enslaved Black individuals buried in unmarked graves at a Louisville cemetery were honored this weekend.
Thousands of free and enslaved Black individuals buried in unmarked graves at a Louisville cemetery have been honored.
WLKY reports that the ceremony took place during Black History Month at Saint Louis Cemetery in Tyler Park, four years after the unmarked graves were discovered during research conducted by a local deacon. It is part of the ‘Saint Louis Cemetery East Slope Project,’ which seeks to identify and mark the unmarked graves.
The deacon uncovered an undeveloped field, which turned out to be a segregated section of land known as ‘East Slope,’ the Black section of a segregated cemetery. The unmarked graves discovered include those of several U.S. troops, Louis Hunter and Thomas Nichols, soldiers in the 107th United States Colored Infantry during the Civil War, one of Louisville’s first Black doctors, and Catharine and James Madison Smith, two agents of the Underground Railroad.