PaulGuzzo

We wrote a story a year ago on a local man who spends his retirement looking through death certificates to ID who is buried in mass graves in the county's potter's field. He mentioned he kept find death certificates for a cemetery called Zion that he'd never heard of. We looked into it and found it was Tampa's first African American cemetery. That seemed like a story. But we quickly realized that we could not ID where the bodies went. And the search began.

Everyone involved in our research was energized. It's not just that bodies were lost but no one had ever heard of the cemetery. That chapter had been ripped from Tampa history books. So to not just retell history but actually rediscover it - such as who built it and owned it - was exciting.

So a former Zion neighbor contacted us after the initial report came out - https://www.tampabay.com/hillsborough/woman-96-recalls-placing-flowers-on-graves-before-zion-cemetery-disappeared-from-memory-20190626/.

Sadly no descendants have reached out to us. We are now working with genealogists to find some but that is not something that will be turned around quickly.

That is ONE complicated question.

A popular opinion is simply lack of foresight. When the forefathers of Tampa developed it, they never imagined it would expand its boundaries to such a degree. SO, they built cemeteries on the outskirts. Then as the city grew, it touched the cemeteries and developers had to move those to make room for growth. The white cemeteries were properly moved. But the black ones seem to just have had their headstones picked up.

The purpose? Well, beyond spiritual, there is an economic reason. The state has strict laws about disturbing graves. So if you happen to buy land with a lost cemetery on it, you're pretty screwed. So identifying these so that the land doesn't continue to change hands until someone is ultimately left holding the purse is a necessity.

Anger, shock, despair.

When they first announced that graves were found under the housing projects, it was a strange moment for me as a reporter.

On one hand I wanted to cheer. My reporting had been proven right!

But then I saw the hurt in the room. Tears flowed. People prayed. I've never experienced anything so powerfully sad. An entire room crying for the horrors their ancestors had to endure.