FLORENCE, Ky. — More than 100 African American graves with no head stones were recently discovered at the Florence Cemetery.

The city of Florence is now trying to right the wrong of those people being forgotten by history. A relative of one of the buried people explained how important it is to remember.

Priscilla Chambers knows her history. She descends from families whose roots run deep in Northern Kentucky. As she walked through the historic African American section of the Florence Cemetery, she recognized some names.

But there are very few headstones in the section, and any of them don’t have names. Seeing the state of one grave made Chambers emotional.

“It’s sad when they’re falling against the trees, and there’s nobody to put them back up again,” she said.

Hillary Delaney, though, is one person dedicated to giving the section of the cemetery the recognition it deserves.

Delaney is a historian with the Borderlands Archive and Historic Center at the Boone County Public Library.

In 2018, she noticed some odd qualities of the African American section. 

Some graves were facing the opposite fence as opposed to the path like other graves. Delany also noticed the African American section was relatively empty in terms of headstones compared to the rest of the cemetery, which is older than the city of Florence itself.

“And this section is the oldest section. So it should look fuller than it is,” Delaney said.

This led to years of research, which included genealogy, death records, old newspaper obituaries and ground penetrating radar.

“When I looked at that, I realized how many unmarked graves there were here,” Delaney said.

She said there is a staggering 127, and counting.

“Of the 127 that were in this section, there are at least that many more,” Delaney said. “That sort of makes them disappear in our history. And for me as a local historian, I get frustrated when the history is not fully told, and so that was part of the motivation, too.”

Chambers learned one of those names was Myrtle Sleet, her great aunt and uncle’s baby daughter.

“I didn’t know that the baby was here. I knew that they had a baby, and the baby was not in the cemetery where they are. And no one had mentioned where the baby was. So for me to know that the baby was here, and she’s going to be recognized just like the parents and the rest of the five children are in the family, it’s very important. It’s very, very important,” she said.

It’s common for old cemeteries like the Florence Cemetery to be segregated by race. Delaney said 55 of the 127 names were former slaves who lived to see their freedom.

On Nov. 2, the city of Florence unveiled a monument to commemorate everyone buried in the section.

“It’s just a little bit of catch up for us for the African American community, because historically, they were not documented in the same way,” Delaney said.

There’s also a website where people can look at the names and see some of their stories.

“Even though you don’t know all the names. It lets people be aware that these people did exist. They were people. And they needed to be known,” Chambers said.

She said she’s grateful for the work Delaney has done, which Delaney said is far from over, as there are so many more unmarked graves that still deserve to have their names identified and their stories told.