Tampa Built Public Housing Over A Cemetery?
Update: 8/26/19
The housing authority announced today that they will relocate almost 100 people who are currently living on Tampa’s first Black Cemetery.
There are no further details as to how they will move everyone but I think we all can agree, it’s the right thing to do.
Zion Cemetery was the first cemetery for African Americans in Tampa. Robles Park Village at 3814 Central Ave could quite possibly be built over a cemetery where the bodies still lay at rest. The cemetery was recently discovered through a tip to the Tampa Bay Times. So what now?
In the 1951 Housing Authority Minutes, it was recorded that three caskets were unearthed, but there’s no mention of it after that.
The Housing Authority is currently conducting an investigation to see if many more bodies are still buried under there, possibly hundreds.
