The City of Tampa is continuing its work to protect and preserve historic cemeteries that have been forgotten or abandoned. On Friday, city leaders laid out the progress they’ve made and what work still needs to be done.
Proposed memorial for Tampaâs erased Zion Cemetery has an $8 million price tag
The estimate depends on three property owners donating their portions of Zion Cemetery to the cause.
Â
Â
A conceptual design of what the Zion Cemetery memorial park could look like. [ Courtesy of the Tampa Housing Authority ]
Updated Yesterday
TAMPA â In the 1920s, the city of Tampa wrongly taxed Zion Cemetery and, when the Black owners did not pay, reverted ownership of the Black burial ground to the white family who homesteaded the land decades earlier.
The homesteaders sold the cemetery and tax debt to a white developer.
The city then waived the taxes, approved permits to build on the cemetery land and looked the other way when the headstones were removed but the bodies were not.