The dirty little secret of Dallas is that African Americans were not respected here for a long time (and some would say even today). necessary public improvements were built as late as the 1960s without regard or respect for traditional African American nrighborhoods of cemeteries.
North Central Expressway was built through a historic former slave burial ground in the 1940s -- and many of the city's black neighborhoods and cemeteries suffered the same fate, paved over or bulldozed for new development without regard to the people who were there first.
When it was time to expand the Convention Center in the late 1990s, the city thought it was edging up close to, but not encroaching on, Pioneer Cemetery.
In reality, the city was about to dig up African American graves that lacked tombstones in the segregated side of the Cemetery. Remains found during construction were recovered and reburied nearby in a common grave under a communal tombstone that reads as follows:
"IN MEMORY OF THE FIFTEEN UNKNOWN CITIZENS OF DALLAS
Buried near this location 1880-1910
Reinterred at this site in 1999"
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"The Oldest Cemetery in Dallas Rediscovered: The Lost Location of Dallas's Slave Burials
Dallas Co. Cemeteries of Tx
James M. Davidson, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
The earliest cemetery established in Dallas, Texas, had lain buried, lost, and forgotten for nearly a hundred years. Now, from a clue found while researching the origin of Freedman's Cemetery (the historic African-American cemetery that was the focus of intensive archaeological investigations in recent years), this lost cemetery, the Old Dallas Burial Ground, has been rediscovered.The information recovered regarding this cemetery's origin and demographyhas provided significant insight into life in antebellum Dallas.
Dallas's oldest cemetery is located a mere four blocks north of two famous landmarks in Dallas history - the Texas School Book Depository and Dealey Plaza- and some two miles to the south of Freedman's Cemetery. While the village of Dallas itself was founded in 1841 by John Neely Bryan, the precise founding date of the old Dallas Burial Ground remains unknown. From our current understanding, however, it is likely that it was formed in the early1840s in an impromptu manner, and only when the first death to visit the village of Dallas dictated its necessity. Importantly, and not a typical for the antebellum South, the Old Dallas Burial Ground marked the final resting place of both "anglo" settlers and enslaved African Americans, making it a true communal graveyard. From the archival record, it would seem that Dallas's first cemetery was closed to further interments sometime around 1869, the very year that Freedman's Cemetery was founded.
Prior to the discovery of the Old Dallas Burial Ground, it had been widely believed that Freedman's Cemetery actually contained the remains of both freedmen and slaves, and that Freedman's Cemetery could ultimately trace its origin to a slave cemetery. The discovery of this earlier burial ground will thus alter many basic assumptions regarding the origin and history of the early community of Freedman's Town, of which Freedman's Cemetery was but one part.
Ironically, like Freedman's Cemetery, an acre of which was paved over by highway construction in the 1940s, the Old Dallas Burial Ground suffered a similar fate. It was first impacted by the physical plant of the Dallas Brewery during its expansion at the turn-of-the-century, and was finally paved over by the creation of Woodall Rogers Freeway in the 1970s.
There is indirect archival evidence suggesting that most, if not all, of the graves of whites were moved from the Old Dallas Burial Ground in the early 1870s to the newly formed City Cemetery. No archival evidence, however, has been found regarding the fate of the remains of the enslaved African Americans. Freedman's Cemetery was formed in 1869 specifically to supersede the Old Dallas Burial Ground's role, and so it would have been the logical (and indeed the only) place available for such re-interments. Although the earliest portion of the Freedman's Cemetery was completely cleared of graves during the highway department's archaeological investigation, no cases
of graves containing the disturbed remains of secondary burials were recovered. With the complete lack of secondary burials at Freedman's Cemetery, and nothing in the archival record to suggest their removal, it seems highly likely that the remains of Dallas's slaves and early freedmen still lie within the Old Dallas Burial Ground.
The presence or extent of subsurface impacts that may have occurred to the graves, due either to the turn-of-the-century brewery expansion or the construction of Woodall Rogers Freeway, is unknown. In the vicinity of the Old Burial Ground, Woodall Rogers Freeway consists of an elevated roadway, and so the cemetery is not capped off with roadbed materials in any conventional sense. Accordingly, archaeological investigation could potentially reveal any surviving graves, which could then be removed to a nearby cemetery.
Note: A full length article on the Old Dallas Burial Ground will be published in the October 1998 issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly."