Illinois is home to 16 historic African American burial grounds documented in the Hallowed Grounds catalog. Each represents a thread in the long narrative of Black community life in this state, from the earliest free settlements through the era of plantation slavery, Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and the modern Civil Rights movement. Together they form an irreplaceable portrait of a people who, denied access to most of the institutions of public memory, built their own.
The history of African American cemeteries in Illinois is inseparable from the history of African American churches, mutual aid societies, fraternal orders, and burial associations. In the long century between the federal abolition of the international slave trade in 1808 and the legal dismantling of segregation in the 1960s, the burial of Black Americans was almost entirely a community matter. Public cemeteries refused to inter people of color; church yards and society-owned grounds rose to fill the void. The pattern was repeated thousands of times across the United States, and the cemeteries that survive in Illinois today are the durable physical evidence of that effort.
Preservation of African American burial grounds in Illinois has historically been undertaken by descendant families and church congregations, sometimes with assistance from local historical commissions and increasingly with support from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The 2024 federal African-American Burial Grounds Preservation Act now supplements these efforts with dedicated National Park Service grants. Sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places enjoy a measure of federal recognition that, while it does not directly fund maintenance, has historically been an important step in unlocking grant funding and in fending off the encroachment of incompatible development.
Researchers and visitors interested in the African American burial heritage of Illinois are encouraged to consult county historical societies, the records of the African Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches, the archives of historically Black colleges and universities operating in the state, and oral history collections held by descendant community organizations. Many of the most significant interments are not commemorated by elaborate stones; the work of recovering these histories is patient, archival, and often physically demanding, but it is among the most meaningful forms of historical recovery being undertaken in the United States today.
Cities and Counties in Illinois
The historic Black burial grounds of Illinois are distributed across 12 cities and counties currently documented in this archive. Each represents a distinct community history; each is presented in its own hub page below, with the individual cemetery profiles linked from there.