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Cemeteries, Construction, And Complicity Tyler’S Universe Cemetery As A Black Burial Site Under Distress, Anjelyque Easley

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

Black culture has shaped the American landscape in unique but often unrecognized ways. Black burial sites and cemeteries honor ancestors and are a site of reverence (LaRoche & Blakey, 1997). However, they are routinely neglected, reflecting America’s history of segregation. Black burial grounds, places of connection to history and family, are often “repurposed” and forgotten as the changing of property ownership occurs. In many cases, through hostile zoning and real estate practices, Black burial grounds have been desecrated (Levinson, 2019). Urban infrastructures like major transitways have cut through Black cemeteries, effectively “burying” the existence of the Black landscape and those …