Deerfield to honor those buried in black cemetery
Hundreds of souls buried in unmarked graves at Deerfield Beach’s “Old Colored Cemetery” will be honored with a memorial park by this summer, the city says.
Newly unveiled plans of what the new park will look like moved some people to tears at a meeting Thursday night.
It’ll be called Branhilda Richardson-Knowles Memorial Park and feature trees and mounds in the grass. It’ll pay tribute to those who were left in a blacks-only cemetery, a parcel that nearly had townhouses built on it in 2015.
“Have you ever been to Arlington National Cemetery? We got the idea for the design from there,” said David Miller, director of the city parks and recreation. “The trees will be lined up to resemble headstones.”
The 3.3-acre park will be named after Richardson Knowles, a Deerfield midwife who delivered many in Deerfield’s African-American community throughout most of the early 20th century, when a hospital birth was not an option because of Jim Crow laws.
Those same laws kept Deerfield’s African-American community from burying their dead anywhere other than a cemetery at Southeast Second Avenue and Fifth Court.
Estimates are that about 300 people were buried there between the late 1897 and 1950s, including a Union soldier and a woman born a slave.
City Commission member Gloria Battle believes her great-grandfather, a Bahamian immigrant, was laid to rest
“Have you ever been to Arlington National Cemetery? We got the idea for the design from there. The trees will be lined up to resemble headstones.” David Miller, director of the city parks and recreation
there.
Upon seeing the design of the memorial park, Battle said, “I was filled emotionally. … It’s a dream come true.”
After being used as a cemetery, the private property was sold and the grave markers were moved.
And when 69 townhouses were proposed for the plot, a majority of the City Commission voted to approve the development over the objections of those who said their dead relatives still were there.
Written into the approval, however, the developer agreed to do a third archaeological survey of the ground to make sure no bodies remained.
After 20 areas were found to have signs of human remains, the study was suspended and the city applied for a state grant to purchase the property from the developer for nearly $1 million.
Another $400,000 has been appropriated for the memorial park’s design and construction, and Broward County contributed a $3,000 grant.
Still to be determined: A design for putting down the names of those who are believed to be buried there. There will be a list of names, Commissioner Battle pledged.
The design was met with the approval of more than 100 who gathered to see the design debut.
“I wish my mother could have been there,” said Valentina Davenport, Knowles-RIcharson’s granddaughter, who also has relations that were buried at the former cemetery.
The ground will be reconsecrated as a cemetery, Battle said.