Old City Cemetery

Established in 1806, this public cemetery was the burial place for most of Lynchburg's African Americans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with as many as 75% of an estimated 20,000 people buried here being African-American. Open to all citizens and “strangers” regardless of race or class, it was the only burial ground in the city open to black residents until White Rock Cemetery opened in the late 1880s, and even in 1925 nine out of ten African Americans who died in Lynchburg were interred here. Before the end of the Civil War and Emancipation, virtually all of Lynchburg's enslaved and free blacks were buried here in sections designated for “colored” persons, and although slave owners usually arranged and paid for burials, enslaved people were allowed special freedoms to attend funerals, conduct their own funeral ceremonies, and mark their own gravesites. These funerals were reported to be among the largest gatherings of people of color in antebellum Lynchburg. After 1865, burials and gravemarkers reflected the growing diversity of Lynchburg's African-American community, including laborers, porters, midwives, and laundresses as well as college professors, politicians, ministers, and other black institution-builders during the era of “separate but equal.” Poor municipal management, inadequate record-keeping, and overburying led Lynchburg City Council to close most of the cemetery to further burials in 1925 and again in 1965, both times amid much controversy.

Lynchburg, Virginia · United States