Ground-penetrating radar finds 145 caskets from an eight-decade-old pauper’s cemetery on the campus of a Florida high school
- Researcher alerted Tampa school district after deeds indicated the cemetary
- Ground radar located the caskets of 145 of the 250 burials recorded at the site
- Most buried at the pauper’s cemetery were black but there were poor whites too
- Local NAACP president demands that the graves memorialized at any expense
Ground-penetrating radar has discovered 145 caskets from a former pauper’s cemetery on the grounds of a Florida high school.
The former Ridgewood Cemetery was found on the grounds of King High School in Tampa, according to an announcement Wednesday from Hillsborough County Schools Superintendent Jeff Eakins.
Records indicate that there were 250 to 268 burials at Ridgewood in the 1940s and 50s. Most were black but some were poor whites.
The cemetery is noted on the school district’s deed record, but was forgotten over time.
Scott Purcell, a senior geophysicist with GeoView, left, and Mike Wightman, president of GeoView use ground penetrating radar technology to scan a portion of King High campus
A map of the campus shows where the scans were run shaded in blue, and the coffins that were located in pink. The presumed cemetery grounds are outlined in red
Tampa opened Ridgewood Cemetery in 1942, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The city sold a 40-acre plot that included the cemetery to a private company in 1957 and the company sold it to the school district in 1959.
The graves came to light when cemetery researcher Ray Reed brought his findings to the school board, that a former cemetery was likely located on the campus.
However, paupers cemeteries rarely have grave markers, and officials were uncertain where on the campus the buried caskets were located.
The district brought in contractor GeoView, which used ground-penetrating radar to scan several possible areas.
Contractor GeoView used ground-penetrating radar to scan several possible areas
A radar map shows the area where the 145 suspected coffins were detected
A detailed view of the scan map shows the suspected coffins outlined as pink boxes
In total, 145 caskets or voids where caskets may have decayed were identified in the scans.
As for the other roughly 100 graves in burial records that are unaccounted for, Superintendent Eakins said that there are several possible explanations.
Some graves may simply have been missed or are underneath a nearby outbuilding, or the remains may have been moved.
Eakins also said that the coffins of children may have been too small to register on the scan. Records show that as many as 77 children were buried in the cemetery.
This image shows what the radar scan actually looks like when it picks up a grave
Yvette Lewis, president of the Hillsborough County NAACP, expressed outrage at the finding and told the Times that she believes the cemetery was lost because most of the people buried in it were black.
‘I am sick of this,’ she said. ‘This hurts deeply. It was hate toward people who looked like me. It deeply saddens me that people can hate you this much, that they can treat you less than.’
Lewis called for the graves to be moved or properly commemorated at any expense.
‘I don’t care what the dollar amount is,’ she said. ‘We have got to recognize the spirits and the souls, and the blood sweat and tears that those people have contributed to this city.’