A company contracted by the City of St. Petersburg has found three possible graves at the Tropicana Field site.
In one hell of a Friday afternoon press release, the city said that Cardno used ground-penetrating radar and identified graves “in Tropicana Field Parking Lots 1&2, at the southern boundary adjacent to 5th Avenue South as well as the freeway, I-275.”
“The three possible graves were part of the Oaklawn Cemetery, which was founded as a cemetery serving white citizens,” the release said. “The other areas of interest extend to adjacent cemeteries to the south including what was the Evergreen Cemetery, established as an African American cemetery, and the Moffett Cemetery, which served as the final resting place for citizens of all races.”
The findings were presented to Mayor Rick Kriseman this week, and Kriseman’s spokesperson shared the report with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
The release said “Cardno will provide a proposal and cost for next steps, including creating a work plan to further investigate their findings. The City will engage in consultation with the community, including descendants, stakeholders, and community groups.”
"While the number of potential graves discovered is small, it is not insignificant. Every person has value and no one should be forgotten,” Kriseman said. “This process is of the utmost importance and we will continue to do right by these souls and all who loved them as we move forward."
The news comes as no surprise to historians and anyone willing to take a breath in between fawning over proposals to redevelop the Trop site—with or without the Tampa Bay Rays.
In April, Julie Armstrong, a professor and researcher on the project dedicated to honoring and identifying anyone buried at the Trop, laid out the history of the Trop burial sites with Bay News 9. She alluded to the segregated Oaklawn cemetery and the Moffett gravesite, which dates back to 1888 and was built initially for civil war vets and then used to bury many of St. Pete’s Black residents. Armstrong told the station that the conventional thinking and history is that the bodies were exhumed, but in the mid-’70s when I-275 was being built, human remains were found at the Moffett site.
And the history behind the neighborhood that the Trop is built on—recently known as the Gas Plant—is complicated at best, deplorable at worst.
As previously reported by CL City Wilds columnist Thomas Hallock, folks like St. Petersburg griot Gwendolyn Reese grew up at 1305 Fifth Ave. S, in a cherished part of town known as Sugar Hill. In the 1970s, Interstate 175 bowled through her block, and following a nationwide pattern, leveled a Black community.
"The church where I was baptized and married is no longer there," Reese explained at a recent forum, speaking in her carefully measured alto. "I can tell my children my story, but I cannot take them and actually show them the buildings."
Stories of the adjacent Gas Plant neighborhood follow the same refrain. Black space got replaced by white "urban renewal." Promising light industry, the city razed the 86-acre site around what is now Tropicana Field, where Booker Creek still flows. The story has been told many times: how the city bulldozed over 285 buildings, 500 households, and at least nine churches.
This is a developing story, and we hope to have more after talking with St. Petersburg officials.
UPDATED 08/09/21 12:02 a.m. Updated with context on the search for graves on the Trop site.
Send anonymous news tips to cltampabay_tips@protonmail.com. Support local journalism in these crazy days. Our small but mighty team works tirelessly to bring you news on how coronavirus is affecting Tampa and surrounding areas. Please consider making a one time or monthly donation to help support our staff. Every little bit helps.
Subscribe to our newsletter and follow @cl_tampabay on Twitter.
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2021.