On a night in April 1848, Amelia and Paul Edmonson and 75 other enslaved residents of the Washington DC area boarded the ship Pearl, setting sail for the Chesapeake Bay in search of freedom. Hope filled the air as the Pearl silently glided through the water, but the feeling was short-lived.
Armed enslavers had heard about this attempted escape and, as the boat approached the Chesapeake Bay, they seized the Pearl. Taken and sold, the enslaved passengers arrived in New Orleans and the crew members went to jail. Later, Amelia Edmonson and her two sons who had also been aboard the Pearl were laid to rest at Mt. Pleasant Plains Cemetery, now known as Walter Pierce Park.
To many, Walter Pierce Park is just a community gathering place, but what many don’t know is that this land is a resting place for African Americans and Quakers. There were around 8,400 settlers buried there, including Black soldiers and key players in the Underground Railroad.
In the 1800s, a Quaker named Jonathan Shoemaker owned the land. Future president John Quincy Adams bought part of the land and his heirs sold seven acres to the Colored Union Benevolent Association, resulting in the cemetery.
The cemetery hosted funerals, where horse-drawn carriages carried the departed, bands played music, and mourners paid their respects. By the mid-1800s, the cemetery averaged around 500 burials a year. Nearly 60% of the people buried there were young children. The graveyard was the final resting place for African Americans and Quaker settlers including the original owners of the land, Jonathan and Hannah Lukens Shoemaker.
Musicians, government workers, teachers, and carriage drivers were buried here, as were the first graduates of Howard University, the first Black men to vote, Civil War veterans, freemen merchants, servants, church leaders, and nurses.
As the city grew, the burial site was forced to close in 1890. When the landowners died in 1923, a search was conducted, discovering 150 graves. Finally, in 1956, the city sold partitioned land to developers and it became the National Zoo. While the signs for Mt. Pleasant Plains Cemetery were removed, the graves endured, although they were disturbed. Developers would remove the bodies without caring for and preserving them.
A team led by Dr. Mark Mack found hundreds of graves belonging to people, their stories, ones of courage and resilience.