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Washington Park Cemetery Subject of Upcoming Documentary
As part of the “Higher Ground: Honoring Washington Park Cemetery, Its People and Place” exhibit at the Sheldon Concert Hall & Art Galleries, a special film screening will be held Tuesday, July 11, 2017, 6:00 p.m.
Hosted by local documentarian Denise Ward Brown, the free film screening will share some of the material and information compiled in the process of completing Ward-Brown’s upcoming documentary on the Washington Park Cemetery.
The screening is free, but reservations are required. Call Paula Lincoln at 314-533-9900 x37 to reserve. Rereashments will be served.
The multi-media exhibit runs until Aug. 26 and features 50 large scale, color landscape photographs by Jennifer Colten, video and oral histories by Denise Ward-Brown, historical land documentation, historical narrative panels and an art installation by Dail Chambers. Together these provide an overview of the history and issues surrounding this historically African-American cemetery.
Washington Park Cemetery, located near Lambert-St. Louis International Airport was established in 1920 as a burial ground for African-Americans at a time when rigid segregation was common practice. For nearly 70 years, it was the largest black cemetery in the region.
It is the final resting place for many prominent African-Americans, including Oscar Minor Waring, the first African-American principal of Sumner High School and Dr. Miles Davis, Sr., father of the great trumpeter. In the 1950s, the cemetery was split and parts paved over by Interstate 70, and again in the 1970s and 1990s disruption and erasure occurred; bodies were disinterred and moved when parts of this land was appropriated by Lambert Airport and Metrolink.
Conceived by photographer Jennifer Colten, the exhibition tells the story of the cemetery’s long and tragic history and reveals the complicated tangle of social injustice, racial politics and neglect that it has suffered. A fully-illustrated exhibition catalogue and a dedicated resource webpage hosted by Washington University Olin Library, Special Collections accompanies the exhibition.
The exhibition is made possible by a Ferguson Academic Seed Fund Grant from Washington University in St. Louis, the Missouri Humanities Council with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Karen and Lawrence Kotner, Barbara and Arthur McDonnell, Nina Needleman, David Capes Photography LLC, Officer Funeral Home P.C. and James and Brenda Rivers. In-kind support is provided by the Special Collections, Olin Library Washington University in St. Louis and the Missouri History Museum.
For more information, see the Sheldon’s website at www.thesheldon.org/current-exhibits.php.
