Lebanon
Mount Moriah
Philadelphia National
Established in 1849, Lebanon Cemetery served as a nonsectarian African American burial ground in South Philadelphia. Once a prominent final resting place for the city's black citizens, Lebanon has long since faded from Philadelphia's maps and popular awareness. Its historical trajectory was afflicted by ghoulish scandal and ruination of black bodies, and its history remains relevant to discussions of racial violence, civil rights, and memorialization today.
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George Washington Bromley. Atlas of the city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, Penn.: G.W. Bromley & Co, 1895.
Philadelphia's mid-1800s rural cemetery boom saw the creation of Mount Moriah Cemetery in 1855. A sweeping, landscaped burial ground on the city's western margin, it welcomed many thousands of interments until its abandonment in 2011. A wide variety of individuals and families, organization and church-members all found a place of permanent rest at Mount Moriah. It was also the site of a law suit that reached the PA Supreme Court in 1876, forcing a head-on confrontation of racial segregation in the twilight of Reconstruction.
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George Washington Bromley. Atlas of the city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, Penn.: G.W. Bromley & Co, 1895.
Founded in 1862 as part of the National Cemetery System, the Philadelphia National Cemetery is now home to thousands of notable Philadelphians and military personnel of the last 150 years. Originally designed to consolidate any Civil War soldiers who perished in area hospitals and camps, it includes the remains of Confederates and U.S. Colored Troops alike. It is still active today, so its administrators are tasked with facing both the nation's troubling history of racial bigotry and the legacy of that history in the 21st century.
Learn more about Philadelphia National.
George Washington Bromley. Atlas of the city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, Penn.: G.W. Bromley & Co, 1895.