For over 85 years, Evergreen Cemetery has been the final resting place of some of West Palm Beach’s most influential black citizens, as well as many other black citizens who contributed to the city’s development. In 1913, a group of seven identified as trustees and owners had the cemetery laid out on land that had originally been part of Gale’s Lake Worth Plat No. 1. Those original trustees and owners, joined by four others, formed the Evergreen Cemetery Association in 1916, with M.J. Gildersleeve serving as president. Before its creation, blacks had been buried in a place identified only as the “colored cemetery” on South Dixie Highway, and they were denied burial in Woodlawn Cemetery, the city’s municipal cemetery, until 1966. Among those buried at Evergreen Cemetery are Dr. T. Leroy Jefferson, the city’s first black physician; J.W. Mickens, an early educator; Henry Speed, a real estate investor; and Dr. J.R. Vickers, a physician.