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Florida marks grave of black hurricane victims
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — City officials Monday
marked the mass grave where nearly 700 black victims of one of the nation's
deadliest hurricanes were buried 74 years ago.
The victims of the 1928 hurricane died in the Everglades,
near Lake Okeechobee. Their bodies were loaded onto barges and taken to the
coast.
Workers separated the corpses by race, burying 69 whites
in caskets at a cemetery. The 674 black victims went to the mass grave, which
the city has since partially paved over.
Two weeks later, Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman
College at Daytona Beach, attended a memorial service and saw the black victims
buried together.
"Our hearts were torn at the sight of the one large mound
containing the hundreds of bodies of men, women and children," Bethune wrote.
"The sadness of this scene fell upon us like a pall."
Since then, the grave has been surrounded by a slaughterhouse,
a dump and a sewage plant. In 1964, a street was moved to partially cover the
burial site and another pauper's cemetery. The land switched hands several times.
Community activists began seeking recognition of the site
in the early 1990s, but attempts to buy it or turn it into a park failed.
Last year, the city bought the grave site. Officials said
they hope to have it listed with the National Register of Historic Places.
The official death toll from the hurricane was 1,836, but
local officials estimated it was closer to 3,000.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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