TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – The rumors swirled for decades: A dark history long lay buried under the grassy knolls and manicured lawns of a country club in Florida’s capital city.
Over the years, neat rows of rectangular depressions along the 7th fairway deepened in the grass, outlining what would be confirmed this month as sunken graves of the slaves who lived and died on a plantation that once sprawled with cotton near the Florida Capitol.
The discovery of 40 graves – with perhaps dozens more yet to be found – has spawned discussion about how to honor those who lie in rest at the golf course. And it has brought renewed attention to the many thousands of unmarked and forgotten slave cemeteries across the Deep South that forever could be lost to development or indifference.
“When I stand here on a cemetery for slaves, it makes me thoughtful and pensive,” said Delaitre Hollinger, the immediate past president of the Tallahassee branch of the NAACP. His ancestors worked the fields of Leon County as slaves.
Delaitre Hollinger, the immediate past president of the Tallahassee branch of the NAACP, visits the Capital City Country Club in Tallahassee, Fla., on Dec. 17, 2019. The discovery this month of 40 graves _ with perhaps dozens more yet to be found _ has spawned discussion about how to dignify the souls who lay in eternal rest at the golf course. Hollinger says the slaves buried at the country club deserve to have their dignity restored. (AP Photo/Bobby Caina Calvan)“They deserve much better than this,” said Hollinger, 26, who is leading a push to memorialize the rediscovered burial ground. “And they deserved much better than what occurred in that era.”