A Grave Situation: Part Six
Exhuming the Past of Lincoln and Forgotten Cemeteries in Pinellas: An eight-part series special to the Gabber By James A. Schnur PINELLAS COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD
Pinellas High School in 1962.
Clearing Up a Murky Situation in Clearwater Similar to the three original cemeteries for St. Petersburg’s Black population, two small cemeteries originally established for Blacks in Clearwater also suffered from neglect and abandonment. They served the segregated Black community known as North Greenwood that took shape by the early 20th century. An Education in How to Destroy a Cemetery In January 1940, city commissioners in Clearwater approved a resolution that set aside a tract of land in North Greenwood a short distance from Stevenson Creek as a cemetery for Black residents. Commissioners also called for a group of trustees to manage the site. The small cemetery began operations shortly thereafter. By 1948, the Pinellas County Board of Public Instruction (now the Pinellas County School Board) set its sights on acquiring 30 acres adjacent to the cemetery for a new school to serve the Black community. Under this plan, the city would maintain the title to the cemetery and continue to use lowlands next to it as a dumping ground for trash. After the meeting, school officials apparently came to an agreement that this cemetery would be eliminated without a specific plan for creating a new cemetery or moving those already buried. During the next few years, the fate of the cemetery remained unresolved as school officials began to plan a
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new campus for Pinellas High School, the secondary school for Blacks in the northern part of the county. The original Pinellas High operated on Madison Street and was known as “Clearwater Colored Junior High” before a high school curriculum was offered in the early 1930s. By the early 1950s, plans moved forward for the construction of the segregated high school at the expense of the small cemetery. Hoping to maintain racial segregation, in August 1953 the city and school board members discussed plans to build a swimming pool and recreation facilities for Blacks alongside the new Pinellas High. In order to do this, they needed crews to excavate and move graves from the 1.5 acre cemetery to a still-undetermined location. Even as construction of the new Pinellas High School began, nobody had selected a suitable place to relocate the graves. In early 1954, Chester B. McMullen Jr. offered land in unincorporated Pinellas along Highland Avenue as a site for the cemetery. City leaders planned to allocate $25 per body to disinter and reinter them at the new site. As they debated this proposal, a landowner in that area tried to get the courts to issue a cease-and-desist order. He claimed the white families who lived in the area would have their water supply compromised since they still used wells. In court hearings people debated the fate of the souls that would soon find themselves without a resting place. White residents in nearby Dunedin protested plans for the reinterment of approximately 350
bodies from the Clearwater site. Some of them filed a lawsuit in mid-1954 to prohibit Clearwater from moving the bodies to McMullen’s land, leading a circuit judge to issue a temporary injunction in May 1954. That month, attorneys in Pinellas County argued that putting this cemetery in their neighborhood would create a health menace and contaminate their water. McMullen’s attorneys – M.H. Jones and his son, Milton Jones – did their best to dispel these fears. During that same month, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous verdict claiming purposefully segregated schools were unequal and therefore unconstitutional. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Justices called for an end to dual systems of education that intentionally separated students by race. In 1955, the court demanded that this process move forward “with all deliberate speed.” As both sides argued in the courtroom, the bodies of the deceased still needed a new home. By the late summer of 1954, Chester McMullen Jr. and Milton Jones located another site in a less developed area east of Dunedin. Once again, protesters opposed the creation of this cemetery. After the new proposal gained approval, protests resumed. Despite the outcries of residents, city officials in Dunedin had little recourse. The new site sat on land outside of Dunedin’s city limits. By October 1954, Clearwater’s city manager issued a work order to finish the transfer of bodies to the new site.
theGabber.com | October 22 - October 28, 2020
