The military confirms as many as 121 unmarked graves in a former Black cemetery have been discovered at a U.S. Air Force base in Florida. Alabama Public Radio covered similar results in its national award-winning investigation “No Stone Unturned.”
A non-intrusive archaeological survey performed over the past two years at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa identified 58 probable graves and 63 possible graves, base officials said Thursday, WFTS-TV reported. APR conducted the first ever ground penetrating radar survey of the Old Prewett Slave Cemetery in Northport as part of the news team’s national award-winning investigation “No Stone Unturned: Preserving Slave Cemeteries in Alabama.”
“Just walking around, and there’s one right there. That’s a casketed burial,” said Strozier after working less than a minute. “Right now, I see an air pocket where a body was buried in the ground. As the body is placed in the ground. If it’s not embalmed, or protected with a vault, it all breaks down, It degrades…decomposes—including the wooden casket,” he observed.
Strozier runs Omega Mapping Services in Fortson, Georgia. APR news invited him to scan this two acre spot near Tuscaloosa. We’re at the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery. It was set up in the 1820’s by John Welch Prewitt, a local plantation owner. The one unmarked grave Strozier found was just for starter. A more complete total came later.
“In less than thirty minutes, forty. Just walking around. I’ve seen forty burials out here,” said Len Strozier during APR’s coverage.
There’s a handful of tombstones and plain burial markers at Old Prewitt. Nowhere close to the number of graves Strozier found. This isn’t just an issue involving the dead. There are the living as well.
Old Prewitt isn’t the only slave cemetery in Alabama.
Researchers from the University of Alabama in Huntsville say up to two hundred slaves rest here, at the Mount Paran Cemetery just south of the Tennessee border. That doesn’t count the estimated ten thousand enslaved people believed to be buried nearby in Huntsville.
Back at the Old Prewitt Slave Cemetery in Northport, Alabama-- Len Strozier has been doing some thinking. His preliminary scan with ground penetrating radar showed forty unmarked graves. So, now he’s ready to make an educated guess about what he calls unmarks.
“I would say there would be at least two hundred unmarks, in this acre and a half, at least that, without a doubt,” said Strozier.
Click below to re-listen to “No Stone Unturned: Preserving Slave Cemeteries in Alabama” at apr.org.
At MacDill Air Force Base, The Tampa Bay History Center notified the military about the possible Black cemetery in 2019, and the base hosted a memorial service in 2021, dedicating a memorial on-site to those buried there.
"We know obviously there was wrong done in the past, but we're working together with our community members," base spokesperson Lieutenant Laura Anderson said. "We want to make what was wrong right."
Officials said they plan to expand the search area this year and will continue to work with the community to determine how to best document the site and to pay respect to the people buried there.