TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A dark history long buried under the towering live oak trees and manicured lawns of a country club in Florida’s capital city of Tallahassee is reviving painful memories of the community’s segregated past and fueling some residents’ calls for a public reckoning.
Under the rolling hills of the Capital City Country Club in one of Tallahassee’s most sought-after neighborhoods, the evidence of Florida’s slave-holding past lies just beneath the surface, in the form of the long-lost burial grounds of enslaved people who lived and died on the plantation that once sprawled with cotton there.
Across the country, many thousands of unmarked and forgotten cemeteries of enslaved people are at risk of being lost, as descendants and volunteers fight development and indifference.