Mayor Andre Dickens joined the Historic Oakland Foundation for the completion of a six-year restoration project of Oakland Cemetery’s historic African American burial grounds. You can now explore the burial ground, which hadn’t received a large-scale restoration in over 100 years.
As Atlanta’s oldest park and the final resting place of many notable ATL citizens, the African American burial ground feature over 1,200 entrepreneurs, educators, ministers, and other prominent and ordinary citizens who helped shape the city’s rich history.
The $600,000 restoration project included extensive hardscaping and landscaping. The completion was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Mayor and the Big Bethnal AME Church Choir.
They write on their website that the objectives of the restoration project were “to carefully repair and stabilize a variety of unique and fragile headstones and to rebuild and to re-grout retaining walls with compatible and sympathetic materials.”
Oakland Cemetery hosts an unmissable line-up of events throughout the year, including special tours and seasonal experiences. For more information, click here to visit their website.
Visiting Oakland Cemetery is one of the many incredible things you can do when visiting Atlanta’s historic Grant Park neighborhood. For a full round-up of unmissable Grant Park gems, click the link below.