TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Local officials in Florida’s capital city have voted to sell a city-owned golf course built on top of the graves of enslaved people to a once-segregated country club, despite vocal opposition from local residents and historians.
Evidence of Florida’s slave-holding past lies just beneath the surface of the manicured greens of the Capital City Country Club in one of Tallahassee’s most sought-after neighborhoods, in the form of the long-lost burial grounds of enslaved people who lived and died on the plantation that once sprawled with cotton there.
The Tallahassee City Commission voted 3 to 2 on Wednesday to sell the publicly owned 178-acre (72-hectare) golf course to the politically connected country club for $1.255 million.
The graves beneath the golf course
Back in 2019, archaeologists with the National Park Service identified what they believe to be 23 unmarked graves and 14 possible graves near the 7th hole of the golf course, which is semiprivate and currently operates on city-owned land…