Laurel Grove South Cemetery
Savannah, Georgia, United States
Savannahs principal nineteenth-century African American cemetery, holding free people of color, Civil War soldiers, and the founders of the citys Black institutions, still a center of community memorial.
Laurel Grove South was set aside in 1853 as the burial ground for Savannah's enslaved, free, and later freed Black community, and it holds the city's Black history in stone: free people of color from the antebellum years, United States Colored Troops veterans, educators, ministers, and the founders of Savannah's Black churches and schools. The grounds are also a rare survival of historic cast-iron and folk gravemarking traditions of the coastal South.
Community memorial practice here is continuous: Decoration Days, church pilgrimages, heritage-marker tours, and family tending across generations. It is a place where the ancestor-work of a community is conducted in the open and by name.
Visiting
801 W 44th St, Savannah; open daily during daylight hours. See the City of Savannah cemeteries page.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GA_Savannah_Laurel_Grove_Cem_South01.jpg), CC BY-SA.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories