Cedar Grove cemetery is across the city from the Augusta National, the other side of two sets of railway tracks in a part of town where the traffic doesn’t stop and the tourists don’t pass. The plot was set aside in 1820 as a place to bury slaves in shallow, unmarked, graves.
Over time it turned into the black cemetery, the city’s first black principal is buried there, the first black dentist, the first black member of the local legislature. “Because there is no definitive book on African-American history Cedar Grove is the bastion of our cultural heritage,” said local historian Joyce Law when the cemetery marked its bicentennial, “this is where the stories are.”
