In the Summer of 2022, I worked alongside my mentor Dr. Gordon F.M. Rakita to continue research efforts in documenting portions of Red Hill Cemetery through mapping efforts using a surveyor transit and Ground Penetrating Radar. The Red Hill Cemetery Project is an ongoing collaborative project with students and faculty at the University of North Florida, and the Okefenokee Heritage Center that is currently documenting and recording the oldest African American cemetery in Waycross, Georgia.

Approaching the approximately six-acre Red Hill Cemetery, the only indicator of the site is a small remnant fence that outlines the northwest edge of the community’s oldest African American cemetery. Beyond the fence, trees and dense brush dominate the landscape, obscuring the original pathways through familial burial plots. Gravestones, scattered bricks, and broken concrete vaults underline and punctuate the sacrality of the space, representing a few of the hundreds of graves that no doubt remain unidentified. The anthropology research portion of the Red Hill Cemetery Project assisted in mapping the cemetery, including existing indicators of burial locations, and identifying unmarked graves. By mapping and recording the cemetery’s current condition, gathering oral histories in the local community, archiving historical documents, and building a database of names and dates of individuals interred here, we seek to preserve and memorialize the lives of these important members of the Waycross community.