The Tennessee Historical Commission held a meeting on January 24, where the Nomination Review Board approved Pleasant Garden Cemetery to be considered for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
Now, the THC National Register staff will submit the approved nomination to the National Park Service in Washington, D.C. The National Park Service has final say on whether a property is listed, rejected, or returned to THC for revisions.
Pleasant Garden Cemetery is the oldest African American owned cemetery in Tennessee. It was chartered in 1890 and opened in 1891.
A 61-page document written by Stacey Graham, Savannah Grandey Knies, and Steph McDougal from the Organization Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University was submitted to the THC National Register staff.
The document includes research from historical census data, death certificates, newspaper articles, deed records, history books, interviews with descendants of owners and family members buried at the cemetery and a litany of other reference materials.
According to the document, the total number of graves is unknown but estimated to be around 3,000. Pleasant Garden is the final resting place for some notable African Americans from Chattanooga.
The document stated that the George W. Franklin family is likely the most prominent family in Pleasant Garden’s history.
It stated that the Franklins achieved both individual and collective accomplishments as a family of male and female funeral directors and community leaders who have served the African American community in Chattanooga from 1894 to the present day.
Also buried at Pleasant Garden is Ed Johnson. A white mob lynched Johnson on the Walnut Street Bridge in 1906. He had been accused of raping a white woman, Nevada Taylor, although she could not provide a description of her attacker and Johnson had a solid alibi of being elsewhere.
The document stated that after Johnson was found guilty by an all-white jury, his African American attorneys appealed the verdict. In retaliation the attorney’s office was set on fire. They appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, federal district court, and finally the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a stay of execution while Johnson’s case was being heard. In response, the judge and sheriff orchestrated Johnson’s lynching in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order.
One of the so called “Scottsboro Boys,” LeRoy Wright, is interred at Pleasant Garden. He was wrongfully imprisoned from 1931–1937 after he and nine other African American young men were falsely accused and then convicted of raping two white young women. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1932 ruled that they had not received due process and ordered new trials. The document stated Johnson and Wright were high profile victims of Jim Crow violence due to the public nature of their cases.
The document stated Jasper Lyons, buried at Pleasant Garden, was convicted for carrying a pistol and thrown in the county workhouse, where guards beat him so severely that his death in 1913 warranted an inquest. His body was exhumed, but the cause of death was presumed to be tuberculosis instead. Apparently, this illness caused a weakness in Lyons that the guards mistook for laziness, prompting them to resort to excessive physical punishment. The strap marks on Lyons’ body were still visible after three weeks of decomposing in the grave.
The document stated that in addition to the elite members of the African American community, many of the people interred in Pleasant Garden began their lives as enslaved non-citizens, as well as the working-class citizens of the city.
The document explained the historic significance of the cemetery stating, “Pleasant Garden Cemetery is significant at the local level in the areas of Ethnic Heritage: Black and Social History due to its 1890 establishment as a private, Black cemetery when Black Chattanoogans had limited burial place options due to racial segregation. With most burials occurring between 1890 and the late 1960s, Pleasant Garden quickly grew into Chattanooga’s largest Black cemetery. Individuals interred at Pleasant Garden were associated with major trends in African American history, such as enslavement; community building; Jim Crow violence and discrimination; and the Civil Rights Movement and include members of the lower working classes as well as prominent leaders.”
There is an obelisk placed near the highest point of Pleasant Garden Cemetery listing the original board of directors. These included John H. Scott, Walter W. Meadows, Armstead S. Scruggs, Mack C. Bowers, Joseph Kemp, Johnathan Austin, W.M. Rice, H. M. Wilson, L.C. Jackson, James W. White, S.P. Johnson, George W. Penn, and J. E. Cleague. These men included artisans, professionals, businessmen, active members of the Republican party and local fraternal organizations, and several board members of the local Penny Savings Bank.
According to the document, by the 1970s, the cemetery was in a rundown condition. A plan was developed to revitalize the cemetery, but it never came to fruition.
The cemetery has been maintained by volunteers, including the Friends of Pleasant Garden, adjacent property owner David Young, and Chattanooga’s African American Cemetery Preservation Fund.
The full document can be found here: thc_srb_pleasant-garden-cemetery.pdf