'Forgotten' black cemetery found at Florida Air Force Base

Officials at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, say they have confirmed the location of a lost former black cemetery on base grounds and identified 121 potential gravesites, capping three years of archaeological research and building on previous findings .

“We're ready to say this is Port Tampa Cemetery,” Senior Master Sgt. Terry Montrose, a base spokesman, said Sunday.

Between 1840 and 1920, dozens of individuals, mostly black, were buried in unmarked graves at Port Tampa Cemetery in Tampa, he said. The air base was built on this site between 1939 and 1941.

The base began searching for graves in 2019 after historians at the Tampa Bay History Center alerted officials that there might be a former black cemetery on land now occupied by the base, Sergeant Montrose said.

Using ground-penetrating radar and cadaver dogs, searchers found eleven possible unmarked graves between 2019 and 2021. That wasn't enough to say for sure they had found a burial site, as the graves were scattered sporadically, Sergeant Montrose said.

“But there were enough bodies that we thought we should memorialize,” he added.

The cemetery was discovered on a grassy area near a flight line on the base, which is spread over more than 5,700 acres.

The base held a memorial service in February 2021 and dedicated a plaque to those buried there.

“This cemetery has been cleared; this cemetery was forgotten; this land was taken from them,” Yvette Lewis, the president of the Hillsborough County chapter of the NAACP, said at the time of those buried there. “Their loved ones laid them down so that they could rest their souls, so that they would not be trampled, covered, or walked on.”

Hillsborough County Judge Lisa Campbell, whose grandparent's first-born child was buried at the site, told those gathered, “We're all going to have to grapple with how and why these kinds of things happen.”

“Everyone from any culture expects that you can come and visit your loved ones if you want, to sit down and solemnly remember them; in this case that did not happen,” she said.

Base officials continued the search and discovered another 110 possible or probable graves between 2021 and 2023, Sergeant Montrose said.

The findings led officials to confirm that the site was the Port Tampa Cemetery, he said, because the graves were grouped close together in a one-acre area, “so we know it's an area that was intentionally created to bury bodies.”

A historical marker at the base describes the Port Tampa Cemetery as a cemetery used by community members who lacked the resources to establish formal burial grounds.

“It was one of many African American cemeteries in the area that had been forgotten or purchased for redevelopment,” the marker said is reading.

Several of these cemeteries have been rediscovered in Tampa in recent years.

In 2019, school district officials identified what they believed to be Ridgewood Cemetery on the edge of the C. Leon King High School campus, where primarily African Americans were buried in the 1940s and 1950s.

The same year, land that had since been occupied by warehouses and public housing was identified as Zion Cemetery, an African American cemetery built in 1901 where hundreds of people were believed to be buried.

Last year, Florida passed a law to help protect and preserve historic cemeteries and cemeteries that have been uncovered throughout the state. The measure will create a Historic Cemeteries Advisory Board that will research and uncover lost cemeteries.

MacDill Air Force Base will continue to search for more unmarked graves through the end of the year, Sergeant Montrose said. After the search is complete, officials will consult with community stakeholders on next steps.

“We don't think we've found them all,” he said. “We don't know how many more there are.”