Greenwood Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida

Greenwood Cemetery is the burial ground that Black residents of Tallahassee organized in 1937 on the east side of Old Bainbridge Road, after the city closed its public cemeteries to Black burials.

The City of Tallahassee history of Greenwood calls the story intimately connected with the history of race relations in Tallahassee. The city abridged that history from A History of Greenwood Cemetery, Tallahassee, Florida, 1937 to 1987, a booklet sponsored by the former Historic Tallahassee Preservation Board of Trustees and the Florida Department of State. It says the grounds now encompass 12.4 acres, grown from the ten acres first bought east of Old Bainbridge Road.

The site carries federal recognition. The National Park Service lists Greenwood Cemetery in its National Register of Historic Places collection under reference 03000510, with a record published June 5, 2003, giving Black social history and art as its areas of significance and 1937 as its significant year. The National Register nomination places the cemetery south of Tharpe Street and north of Seventh Avenue, and says that, begun in 1937, it remained in use with over 1000 burials, all African-American.

Greenwood is one of the city-owned grounds. The City-Owned Cemeteries page gives Old City Cemetery and Greenwood Cemetery their own history pages, notes that most burials in Tallahassee take place in private cemeteries rather than the five the city owns and operates, and lists the Cemeteries unit at 300 South Adams Street, 850-891-8711.

In early 1937 the Tallahassee City Commission closed the Black section of Oakland Cemetery, and the separate site the city had picked lay on ground too low for burials.

Segregated burial in Tallahassee goes back to the city's first public cemetery. The Greenwood history counts 381 enslaved Black residents and 6 free people of color in Tallahassee in 1830, and 889 enslaved and 46 free people of color in 1860, and says that a second public cemetery, Oakland, was established in 1902 with separate burial areas for Black and white residents. The Old City Cemetery history records that white burials at that older ground were restricted to the eastern half, along present-day Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and that enslaved people and free people of color were buried in the western section along Macomb Street. The two city pages date Old City Cemetery differently: the Greenwood page says City Commissioners established it in 1841, while the Old City page says it was established in 1829 by the Territorial Legislative Council, acquired by the city in 1840 and laid out in squares and lots in 1841.

In September 1936 City Ordinance 272 established Evergreen, an official cemetery for Black residents near Abraham and Alabama Streets, in the vicinity of present-day Griffin Middle School. At the City Commission meeting of October 13, 1936, a delegation that included the undertaker J.R.D. Laster and J. G. Riley objected that the Evergreen land was too low for cemetery purposes. Two weeks later commissioners moved to tighten control of deeds in the Black section of Oakland, so that unused lots would revert to the city. On January 26, 1937 the commission read an ordinance closing that section to further Black burials, and the vote to pass it was unanimous. The Tallahassee Daily Democrat, the early name of the Tallahassee Democrat, ran the notice on February 10, 1937. The city history calls Evergreen never used.

Members of Tallahassee's Black community founded the Greenwood Cemetery Company on March 19, 1937, to buy land for a cemetery near Tallahassee in Leon County.

The city history summarizes the charter: the company was formed to acquire land so as to provide a burial place near Tallahassee in Leon County, and any Black person of good character and not less than 21 years of age could join with the approval of a majority of the board. J.R.D. Laster, the undertaker whose name runs through this period, was among the founders.

The company bought ten acres in Section 26 of Township 1 North, Range 1 West, lying east of Old Bainbridge Road, from one of its own founders for $10. Burials began shortly after the cemetery was established in 1937. A surveyor laid out the lots and blocks of the original ten acres, and the corners were marked with metal stakes set in concrete. Over the years the size and shape of the property changed. The company sold burial spaces with the understanding that families would maintain their own plots in Tallahassee, an arrangement that held only as long as descendants stayed and cared for the graves.

Volunteers and the Greenwood Foundation restored the grounds in 1985 to 1987, and the cemetery was rededicated under City of Tallahassee jurisdiction on October 10, 1987.

As families moved away or passed on, Greenwood looked neglected. The city history describes tree roots disrupting graves, tall grass and shrubs hiding them, collapsed graves leaving gaping holes and wooden markers rotting away, while lot ownership and burials were not always accurately recorded. In January 1985 a group of Tallahassee citizens met and formed the Greenwood Foundation to restore the cemetery to a safe and respectable condition, and one of its first acts was raising money to hire a lawn care company.

The Foundation went to the Tallahassee City Commission and the Leon County Commission. On May 28, 1986, the city manager reported that Greenwood was the only cemetery in the city with platted streets deeded to the public, and the city estimated that $280,000 would be needed to repair its streets, paths and drainage. The commission voted to accept responsibility for the streets and drainage, with landscape maintenance left to the Foundation or others. Throughout 1986 the Foundation received money from both the city and Leon County.

In May 1987 some 200 volunteers completely cleaned and mowed the Tallahassee cemetery, and by late September it was ready to be acquired by the city. Volunteers trained by the Historic Tallahassee Preservation Board surveyed every marker, recording its inscription, condition, material and design, and that map and information became the official records of Greenwood. The rededication on Saturday, October 10, 1987 honored those who had placed the cemetery under the City of Tallahassee's jurisdiction.

The City of Tallahassee sorts Greenwood's markers into three kinds: commercial marble or granite stones, cast concrete markers and hand-fashioned markers made by relatives and friends.

The city history says the commercial stones include markers provided by the U.S. Government for military veterans, and that cast concrete markers, with inscriptions cut while the concrete was wet, were generally provided by a funeral home or a local business. Large commercial stones generally indicate higher status, but the city cautions that not all hand-fashioned markers indicate low economic status in Tallahassee's Black community; many are expressions of folk art with reflections of West and Central African traditions.

Examples at Greenwood include crosses of wood and metal, concrete markers set with pieces of decorative tile and mirror, gravestones painted silver, and graves marked with items belonging to the dead, such as a bowl or a cup and saucer. The tile, mirrors and reflective paint are associated with water and the old belief that a river was crossed to the afterlife. Plantings carry meaning too: crepe myrtle, cedars as symbols of everlasting life, and palms as symbols of resurrection. The city calls the Tallahassee cemetery an outdoor museum, and its bibliography ranges from City Commission and Leon County Commission minutes to Dorothy Dodd's article in Apalachee, published by the Tallahassee Historical Society in 1950.

The city history names several people important to Tallahassee's history among the burials, from the first Black graduate of Florida State University to a Lincoln High School principal.

The city history lists Maxwell Courtney, the first Black student to attend and graduate from Florida State University (FSU); Willie Gallimore, a three-time All-American running back for Florida A&M University (FAMU) who played for the Chicago Bears; James M. Abner, principal of Lincoln High School; and T. M. McKinnis, owner of the Red Bird Cafe. A McKinnis is also among the founders of the Greenwood Cemetery Company named on the same city page, which spells his initials T. H. there.

The National Register nomination explains why the graves matter beyond the names: it was nominated for local significance under Criterion A in the areas of Ethnic Heritage: Black, Social History, and Art, and it states that the cemetery was established as a private cemetery in 1937 when the City of Tallahassee closed the public Old City Cemetery and Oakland Cemetery to African-American burials.

The city and the National Register describe the same Old Bainbridge Road cemetery but give different acreage, 12.4 acres against 16.47 acres.

The nomination's larger figure is the whole parcel; the city's 12.4 acres is the figure on its current history page, and this page reports both. Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the City of Tallahassee Greenwood, Old City Cemetery and City-Owned Cemeteries pages and the National Park Service National Register record and nomination for reference 03000510.