A guide to the federal recognition that has come, often belatedly, to historic Black burial grounds.
What National Register Listing Means
The National Register of Historic Places, administered by the National Park Service, is the official federal list of properties deemed worthy of preservation. Listing on the Register confers no direct funding and imposes no requirement that owners maintain a property in any particular condition. What it does provide is a measure of federal recognition that a site possesses historical significance, eligibility for certain federal grant and tax-credit programs, and a procedural protection requiring federal agencies to consider the impact of federally funded or permitted projects on listed properties (the Section 106 review process).
African American Cemeteries and the Underrepresentation Problem
Historic African American sites have been substantially underrepresented on the National Register relative to their share of the American historic landscape. This underrepresentation reflects the historical exclusion of African American history from the early decades of federal historic preservation, the labor-intensive nature of the nomination process, the absence of historically Black communities from the professional preservation networks that have customarily prepared nominations, and the destruction of many significant Black sites before any opportunity for nomination existed. The National Park Service has acknowledged this problem in recent years and has launched several initiatives intended to expand the listing of African American sites, including African American burial grounds.
Eligibility Criteria for a Black Cemetery
A historic Black cemetery may be eligible for the National Register under any of four criteria: association with events significant in the broad patterns of American history (Criterion A), association with the lives of significant persons (Criterion B), embodiment of the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction or representation of the work of a master (Criterion C), or potential to yield information important to history or prehistory (Criterion D). Most African American cemetery nominations rely on Criterion A, framed in terms of the cemetery's association with the broad patterns of African American religious, social, or community history in a particular region.
The Special Case of Cemeteries
Cemeteries are generally considered ineligible for the National Register under a longstanding regulatory presumption that funerary properties do not meet the Register's criteria — but the regulations specifically allow listing of cemeteries that derive their primary significance from association with historic events, distinctive design, or the graves of persons of transcendent importance. Historic African American cemeteries that have been listed on the Register have generally been argued under the historic-events exception, on the ground that the cemetery is irreplaceable evidence of the community history of African Americans in a region from which other physical evidence has been lost.
Notable Listed Sites
Among the historic African American cemeteries currently listed on the National Register are the Avenue of the Oaks at Talladega College in Alabama, Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia, Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx (which contains many notable African American interments), Geer Cemetery in Durham North Carolina, Father Dickson Cemetery in Crestwood Missouri, Olivewood Cemetery in Houston Texas, and the Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery in Alexandria Virginia. Each of these listings reflects sustained advocacy by descendant communities and preservation professionals, often spanning a decade or more.
Preparing a Nomination
The preparation of a National Register nomination for a historic Black cemetery is a substantial undertaking that typically requires the assistance of a professional preservationist familiar with the National Park Service's documentation standards. The nomination must establish the cemetery's history, document its physical characteristics, articulate the case for historical significance under one or more of the four criteria, and provide a defensible boundary for the listed area. State Historic Preservation Offices in every state offer technical assistance to nomination preparers, and the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation has supported a number of recent nominations of African American sites.