Freedmen's Cemetery Memorial
Independence Trail Region
2700 Lemmon Avenue, Southwest corner of North Central Expressway (Hwy 75)
Dallas , Texas
Freedmen’s Cemetery, as the name suggests, belonged to a community of formerly enslaved people after the Civil War. Dedicated in 1869, the cemetery closed in the 1920s and suffered from both neglect and vandalism. Over time, the construction of the city’s Central Expressway eliminated most of the remaining above-ground reminders of the cemetery. Between 1991–94, an archeological investigation uncovered more than 1,000 graves, which were carefully relocated, and the local community constructed this memorial. On-site sculptures by David Newton and engraved poetry commemorate those originally buried here.