TAMPA, Fla. — Just north of Downtown Tampa, under roads, homes and businesses lies a forgotten piece of history: Zion Cemetery.

On Wednesday, this once-overlooked site was officially recognized with a marker placement honoring those buried there.

The cemetery’s existence remained hidden until 2019, when human remains were discovered, sparking a lengthy and meticulous effort to uncover the past.

The timeline of this journey began in 2019, when it was revealed that human remains may still be resting in the area. The discovery led to years of painstaking work to locate and identify unmarked graves dating back over a century.

Some of this research was led by the University of South Florida’s Anthropology Department, where experts like Dr. Antoinette Jackson have dedicated their time to the investigation.

For the local community, news of the cemetery’s existence came as a shock.

However, Jackson explains that many residents had long suspected something was hidden beneath their feet. Oral histories and personal accounts from locals revealed eerie tales of ghosts and unexplained sensations, which were later linked to the cemetery’s history.

“Surprisingly there was feelings of relief, because people who were living there, people as we start to interview people and to talk to people, many people felt that they were trying, through oral histories they had been telling people, ‘Hey we are hearing ghosts, we have a feeling that something is here,’” said Jackson.

Far from the public eye, Jackson and her team of graduate students have spent years documenting the stories of the people who once lived and died in Tampa, buried at Zion.

The team has worked through death certificates, old newspaper articles and official records to piece together the identities to confirm identities of those buried, and begin the process of finding living descendants. However, this task is far from simple. In over five years of research, the team has identified only 20 individuals out of an estimated 700 people originally interred at the site.

The process is labor intensive and often involves tracking down descendants from across the country — from North Carolina to Texas — in order to learn more about the lives of those buried there. The challenges of connecting with descendants, sometimes distant cousins or individuals who have changed their names, add another layer of difficulty to the process.

A patron holds a program from the dedication ceremony held Wednesday afternoon at the Zion Cemetery marker unveiling. (Spectrum News)

“That’s what the genealogist that we are working with is running up against,” said Jackson. “People are you know far away as North Carolina or Texas or somewhere else that the living descendants are, and then sometimes people are connected in different ways, you know, they may be cousins or they may have changed their names.”

Though progress has been made, Jackson emphasizes that the unveiling of the Zion Cemetery marker Wednesday is only the beginning. With plans to publish at least seven profiles of those buried at Zion by June, the work to honor and acknowledge these forgotten individuals continues. Jackson hopes that the marker will encourage more people to come forward with information, helping to fill in the gaps of the cemetery’s history.

“This marker also means we have much more work to do,” Jackson said. “We need to use this as a call to action to look for other places where cemeteries have been built over and not acknowledged.”

Zion Cemetery is not an isolated case.

Across the United States, forgotten Black cemeteries have been discovered beneath development and urban sprawl.

Jackson’s work on Zion Cemetery is just one example of her 20-year career in uncovering these hidden histories, with previous projects in Georgia and Tennessee. The continued effort to shed light on these forgotten burial sites is an ongoing mission — one that calls for recognition, respect and remembrance for the lives that came before.

As the marker is now unveiled, it is a moment for Tampa — and the nation — to reflect on the past, ensuring that the stories of those buried in forgotten cemeteries are never erased again.