独家爆料

Located in the Brownsville neighborhood of Miami, Florida, Lincoln Memorial Park is one of the oldest African American cemeteries in Dade County. It is the final resting place of many soldiers who served their country, from the Civil War to Iraq, as well as community pioneers who helped shape the history and culture of Miami. Thousands have been laid to rest within the twenty-acre parcel, which is still an active burial site. But the cemetery, along with the story it reveals about the nature of our segregated past, is now facing an uphill battle for survival. 聽聽

History

In the early 1920s, the property that would become Lincoln Memorial Park was owned by a White realtor named Fred B. Miller. Stories passed down from one generation to another recount how Kelsey Leroy Pharr had cut down lynching victims he found hanging from trees and secretly buried them at night on Miller’s vacant land. As the stories go, Miller discovered Pharr in the course of one such burial, but rather than prosecuting him for trespassing, was moved by his compassion. Miller then sold the property to Pharr at a significant discount, making Pharr one of the very few African Americans to own a cemetery in the Jim Crow South (Pharr would later become the first licensed African American embalmer south of St. Augustine, Florida).

While there is little beyond oral tradition to confirm the cemetery’s origin, records do indeed reflect that Pharr had begun purchasing pieces of the property from Miller by the fall of 1923, when the books of the Pharr Funeral Home record the first burials in the cemetery. In May 1924, Pharr and his partners filed a Notice of Intention to Apply for a Charter to formally incorporate as a burial service, and one year later a portion of the property was officially platted. Pharr apparently continued to purchase contiguous parcels for several years, finally, in 1937, consolidating the twenty acres that constitute Lincoln Memorial Park today. 聽

In its heyday, Lincoln Memorial Park was touted as “The Finest Colored Cemetery in the South.” Among the luminaries buried there is D.A. Dorsey, Miami’s first African American millionaire. Born circa 1872 as the son of former slaves, Dorsey made his mark in real estate, buying lots and building homes (at first, with his own hands) in South Florida before founding the Negro Savings Bank in 1916, giving many African Americans access to banking for the first time. He also owned and operated the first African American hotel in the area, the upscale Dorsey Hotel once located on Miami’s 2nd Avenue, and his generosity as a philanthropist and civil rights leader helped make possible Dorsey High School (opened in 1937) and Dorsey Memorial Library (opened in 1941), both serving the African American community. When Dorsey died in 1940, flags throughout Miami, in both White and African American communities, flew at half-staff.聽聽

Also buried at Lincoln Memorial Park is H.E.S. Reeves, founder of Miami’s first African American newspaper, the Miami Times, launched on September 1, 1923, and operating to this day. Arthur and Polly Mays, pioneering activists for education in Dade County’s underserved Goulds community, are buried there as well. So, too, is Gwen Cherry, the first African American women elected to the Florida Legislature, who died in February 1979 and was posthumously inducted in the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame in 1986.

In addition to the well-known figures of the African American community, countless domestic workers and common laborers who helped build much of Miami are buried at Lincoln Memorial Park. Hundreds of veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces are also represented in large numbers at the cemetery, including young men who served in the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean Conflict, Vietnam, and Iraq.

Kelsey Pharr remained actively involved with Lincoln Memorial Park until his death in 1964, when he, too, was interred there, along with his wife, Josephine, and son, Kelsey, Jr. His life was one of service to his community. Pharr founded the first Boy Scout troop for African Americans in Florida, was instrumental in establishing the Miami Negro Civic League (serving as its first president) and was a longstanding member of the Miami Colored Board of Trade.聽 聽

After Pharr’s death, ownership passed to Ellen Johnson, a nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital who had many ties to the local community and who had developed a long-time friendship with Pharr. He confided to her that his one desire was to maintain the cemetery as a living monument for African Americans. Johnson shared his aspirations and spent much of the rest of her life attempting to honor his wishes. Under her ownership, the property was officially designated an Historic Site by Dade County (it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in the summer of 2018). The twenty-acre cemetery occupies a flat, square parcel surrounded by urban housing. Its sole entrance, located on 46th Street, is marked by an arched, stone gateway framing an asphalt road that enters the parcel before branching east to intersect with overgrown, unpaved lanes that loop through the cemetery’s northern and southern sections. The cemetery’s most salient feature is its above-ground stone sarcophagi, crowded together in undulating rows, interspersed with mature canopy trees.