Cemetery Segregation: Jim Crow and the Racial Division of Eternal Rest

Greenwood Cemetery has three segregated sections: K, T, and 3. Sections K and T are the oldest in what was originally the back of the cemetery. Burials of African American residents were restricted to these sections until 1967 when the City of Orlando overturned the ordinance that mandated segregation in the cemetery. 

While Orlando’s earliest days are often remembered through tales of alligator wrestling cowboys and orange grove booms, a portion of Orlando’s early residents are largely forgotten. In the early sixteenth century, Florida’s Black population resided in the Spanish Colony called LaFlorida. In 1821 it became an English Colony, now called “Florida,” with a larger Black population. When Florida became a state in 1845, almost half its population were enslaved African Americans.¹ In Central Florida, many enslaved individuals sought their freedom and refuge with the Seminole Tribe. Andrew Jernigan was the first recorded slaveholder in Orlando in 1843.² After the Civil War, newly emancipated men and women came to the area in search of land of their own and employment in the growing community.³ 

By the time Greenwood Cemetery was founded in 1880, more African Americans called Orlando home, and their population had increased. Many of these residents worked as laborers in local orange groves or domestic servants in the homes of wealthy white Orlando pioneers. However, a number gained prominence and success despite restrictive barriers.⁴ Notable African American residents buried in Greenwood Cemetery included the Wells’Built Hotel owner and prominent physician, Dr. William Monroe Wells; the owner of The Winter Park Advocate newspaper, Gus C. Henderson; and the respected businessman J. A. Colyer. 

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Southern states and municipalities passed a host of Jim Crow laws designed to separate and subjugate persons of color and reinforce prevailing notions of racial order. Segregated by law and custom, African Americans formed residential communities near downtown Orlando to be close to where they worked. An example of one of these Black neighborhoods is Jonestown, which was located north of Greenwood Cemetery's original footprint.⁵ Orlando created zoning restrictions beginning in 1924, that established segregated zones and discouraged racial mixing.⁶ These zones prevented African American residents from moving into White neighborhoods and allowed them to live in only three designated areas. 

These segregated restrictions were not limited only to neighborhoods but also applied to cemeteries. Though it has been said that “death is the great equalizer,” cemeteries in the past were also divided along racial lines.⁷ Following the policy of many cities throughout the United States, and particularly the South, Greenwood Cemetery established designated sections for white and African American burials early on.⁸ Greenwood Cemetery practiced segregation within the cemetery from its early days and were codified in the first ordinances after the purchase of the cemetery by the City in 1893.⁹ Early on, grounds for segregated burials existed on a western portion of section H and were noted as the “Old Colored Cemetery” on a 1925 map of the Cemetery.¹⁰ This area was in the original rear corner of the cemetery, though it is unclear whether this burial site predated Greenwood Cemetery’s development. Portions of this section were an early “potter’s field” for the burial of those without means. When the cemetery expanded in 1911, the City added Sections K and T, expressly for segregated burials. These sections were initially in the rear west of the cemetery, near the sinkhole now known as Lake Greenwood. They were obscured from the view of the original main entrance by a hill and curved, winding pathways.¹¹ On the northeast corner, similarly out of sight, was the location reserved for the burial of the poor. The original entrance to the cemetery was moved from Gore Street to Greenwood Street in 1919. The meant that visitors first encountered the segregated sections upon entering the cemetery. After the cemetery expanded for the final time in 1935, an additional segregated section was added to the new northwest corner, known as Section 3.¹² 

In 1967, the African American community alerted the local chapter of the NAACP that the segregated lots in Greenwood Cemetery were full. The NAACP investigated and found the policy in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which led to a speedy repeal of the 1893 City of Orlando ordinance requiring segregated burials in the cemetery.¹³ In addition to prominent figures in Orlando’s history, the cemetery is also home to burials that were the result of some of Central Florida’s darkest chapters, including the Ocoee Massacre when the lynching of early Civil Rights activist July Perry occurred.  Today, these sections of Greenwood Cemetery hold important lessons for Orlando’s citizens about the power of community, strength, and perseverance. From prominent leaders in Central Florida’s African American history to individuals unjustly persecuted for their skin color, the stories that lie beneath the surface here are waiting to be told and remembered by new generations. To give a voice to memory is to bring the past to life.   

1. Charlton W. Tebeau and William Marina, A History of Florida, (Florida: University of Miami Press, 1999), 158.

2. James C. Clark, Orlando, Florida: A Brief History (Charleston: History Press, 2013), 51. 

3. Clark, Orlando, 23.

4. W. R. O’Neal, “Orange County’s Negro People: Many Blacks Own Valuable Property,” Sunday Sentinel-Star, March 7, 1937, 4A. 

5. Tana Mosier Porter, “Orlando’s Division Street: The history behind what became a symbol of segregation,” Reflections from Central Florida (Winter 2016), accessed July 10, 2023, https://www.thehistorycenter.org/division-street/ 

6. “Commission Passes on Negro Zone No. 1,” Orlando Sentinel, August 9, 1924, 1.

7. Allan Amanik and Kami Fletcher, Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed (Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2020), 158-9.

8. Howard N. Rabinowitz, “From Exclusion to Segregation: Southern Race Relations, 1865-1890,” The Journal of American History 63, no. 2 (1976): 325–50, accessed May 16, 2024, https://doi.org/10.2307/1899640

9. Marilyn Yalom, The American Resting Place: Four Hundred Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008), 1155; Victoria Abigail Kennedy Lawrence, “Studying Socioeconomic Trends through Cemetery Sales Records: A Case Study of Greenwood Cemetery, Orlando, Florida” (Graduate Thesis, USF Tampa, 2012), 46-47, https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/4122; Orlando, Orange, FL. Ordinances of the City of Orlando, Title 27, Sec 9, (October 1, 1893), City of Orlando. 

10. L B Matthews, Greenwood Cemetery Replat, in Plat, Book L (City of Orlando, 1925), document 1925P00L001, 2. 

11. Lawrence, “Studying,” 46.   

12. Eve Bacon, Orlando: A Centennial History (Chuluota: Mickler House Publishers, 1975), I: 302; “Orlando Takes Grave Plots for Old Taxes: Magruder Property Near Greenwood Brings $21,000,” Orlando Sentinel, June 27, 1935, 1-2.   

13. “City Segregating Cemetery Lots?” Orlando Evening Star, February 21, 1967, 4B.; “Cemetery Segregation Repealed,” Orlando Evening Star, February 28, 1967, 3A.