There's a new statewide program on the way to help search, maintain and memorialize Black cemeteries after the Florida senate voted Thursday to approve the bill, which passed the House on April 19.
As more unmarked or abandoned African American cemeteries and burial grounds are uncovered, Florida lawmakers are working to make sure the history they carry is preserved.
The City of Tampa added protections against future development over cemeteries, after communities raised the alarm about African American burial grounds that were built over and forgotten.
A new historical marker was unveiled Friday at the site of the old College Hill Cemetery in Tampa, where hundreds of minorities, mostly African Americans, were buried more than a century ago, before they were erased from maps in the mid-20th century.