NORTHEAST TALLAHASSEE, FL — As the nation prepares to mark Juneteenth on Friday, Tallahassee will be reminded of its own emancipation milestone on May 20th, the day enslaved people in the city learned they were free.
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Our local history of slavery is preserved, in part, through historic Black cemeteries tucked within the Welaunee area — Munree, Hickory Hill and Clifford Hill. They're maintained by Wilbert Ferrell and other local families.
By the 1860s, Leon County had emerged as part of a booming cotton empire known as "the Cotton Belt," a region dominated by large plantations where enslaved people made up a majority of the population.
Ferrell, the president of the Munree Cemetery Foundation, says the land around Munree Cemetery was once a gathering place tied directly to the moment freedom arrived.
"The 20th of May. That's when they found out in Tallahassee that they were free. At the building where this Munree Cemetery is, they used to do the picnic. They did dances. And they had picnics and sold cakes and stuff like that," Ferrell said.
Munree Cemetery was created in the early 1900s.
Up until 1948, New York businessman Udo Fleischmann owned the Welaunee Plantation property as a bird-hunting preserve, no longer allowing the space to be used as a cemetery.
Fleischmann and his wife later donated land to establish Hickory Hill Cemetery as the main burial ground for African Americans after that restriction.
Clifford Hill Cemetery was founded in 1948 after Fleischmann didn't allow burials at the Munree Cemetery.
One hundred and ten people paid the original landowner $6 each to purchase the 10-acre cemetery.
For Ferrell, the connection to these cemeteries is personal. His sister is buried in Munree Cemetery, and he believes even more of his relatives may be buried on the land.
"Ninety-percent of them were either married or in the family, not necessarily cousins, because back in slavery time, people never knew,” Ferrell said. “A lot of stuff here today, [they] didn't really know because of slavery.”
Historian Delaitre Hollinger, co-executive director of the Florida Civil Rights Museum, says cemeteries like these offer important details about how plantations operated, but he believes there are even more burial grounds that have yet to be discovered.
"In some cases, like here in Tallahassee in 1937, African-Americans were shut out of the city on cemeteries,” Hollinger said. “So, they had to create their own.”
Hollinger said the work of finding and preserving those sites is far from finished.
“They need to be found. They need to be logged, and it's still a lot of work for us to do as far as preserving those cemeteries, but also maintaining those cemeteries," Hollinger said. "I think the first step with that is legislation, but that legislation has to have tied to it funding to perpetually preserve these burial grounds."
Ahead of Juneteenth, both Ferrell and Hollinger are pushing the importance of learning this history.
For Ferrell, maintaining these cemeteries is about more than preservation. It's about identity.
"It's like a memorial. There's something I can always look forward to, and I try to pass this down along to my grandchildren and my children," Ferrell said.
“You don't never want to forget who you are, and if you always remember who you are, you know where you're going and where you're coming from.”
Ferrell says these cemeteries are actively seeking donations to help maintain the grounds, particularly as plans move forward to build a museum at the Munree Cemetery site.
Donations can be made through the Munree Cemetery Foundation's website.
***This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.***
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