TAMPA, Fla — After the city of Tampa stepped in with $50,000 for a memorial and legal resources to establish a non-profit to manage a destroyed segregation African American cemetery, the housing authority doubled down on its stance that a non-profit won't stop the cemetery from being destroyed once again.
"If we're serious about putting this effort into actually creating this and preserving it permanently...we got to have it in the hands of a body that can actually maintain it long term,” said Leroy Moore, chief operating officer for the Tampa Housing Authority, a separate entity from the City of Tampa.
Moore reiterated at a THA board meeting that the non-profit the city just established to help restore Zion Cemetery can go under at any time.
Acting on a report from the Tampa Bay Times, archaeologists have found nearly 300 graves over the last year from the old Zion Cemetery off North Florida Avenue. The cemetery was established in the early 1900s but was erased over time through legal action and an eventual THA housing development built atop the burial grounds.
City spokesperson Ashley Bauman said the city is doing all it can to help support restoring the cemetery, considering it does not own any of the three parcels of land along North Florida Avenue where archaeologists found graves at the THA apartments, a towing lot and a neighboring business.
However, the city stops shy of what archaeologists say is best: bringing all three parcels of land under one ownership and permanently managing the grounds.
"We have to make sure that this deal is protected whether we here or gone. We have to make sure it's done right,” Jerome Ryans, THA CEO said.
The city said it doesn't plan to manage more cemeteries than the ones it currently owns. However, some say that ignores the city's history of excluding African Americans from certain city-owned burial sites.
For example, the city council unanimously passed an ordinance in 1914 barring African Americans from Woodlawn--forcing them to seek and create their own spaces that never got to benefit from the protection and care of city resources.
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