Qualla: Hurricane of 1928 African-American Mass Burial Site

Hurricane of 1928 African-American Mass Burial Site: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Skeeter451, Public domain. On October 1, 1928, roughly 3,000 people gathered in West Palm Beach for an hour of mourning proclaimed by Mayor Vincent Oaksmith. They came to grieve the dead of the Okeechobee hurricane, a Category 4 storm that had struck southeastern Florida two weeks earlier, killing at least 2,500 people and devastating the farming communities around Lake Okeechobee. At Woodlawn Cemetery, a memorial was placed for the storm's victims. But at a pauper's cemetery near the corner of 25th Street and Tamarind Avenue, where 674 bodies of African Americans and people of unknown race had been buried in two layers in a mass grave, no marker was placed. Segregation dictated who received dignity in death. Among those who attended the funeral service was Mary McLeod Bethune, the educator and civil rights activist who understood, perhaps better than most, what that silence meant.

Image: Skeeter451 | Public domain

Hurricane of 1928 African-American Mass Burial Site: The Storm That Drowned the Glades

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fruitboys, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 1928 Okeechobee hurricane made landfall near West Palm Beach on September 16 with winds exceeding 140 miles per hour. The storm drove Lake Okeechobee's waters over its low earthen dike, flooding the surrounding agricultural lowlands in a wall of water that swept away entire c...

Image: Fruitboys | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hurricane of 1928 African-American Mass Burial Site: Separate Even in Death

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ebyabe, CC BY-SA 3.0. The treatment of the dead exposed the racial order of 1920s Florida with brutal clarity. White victims were collected and given individual burials at Woodlawn Cemetery in West Palm Beach, with coffins and markers. African American victims received no such care. Their bodies were ...

Image: Ebyabe | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hurricane of 1928 African-American Mass Burial Site: Decades of Forgetting

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Skeeter451, Public domain. After the burials, the site slipped from public memory. The city of West Palm Beach sold the land, and it changed ownership multiple times through the 1980s. In the 1950s, 25th Street was paved directly over the northern portion of the mass grave, unearthing bodies in the process...

Image: Skeeter451 | Public domain

Hurricane of 1928 African-American Mass Burial Site: Reclaiming Sacred Ground

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fruitboys, CC BY-SA 4.0. The recovery of memory began in 1991, when the Sankofa Society conducted a well-publicized blessing ceremony at the site, bringing the mass burial back to public awareness. The property's owner at the time refused to sell or donate the land back to the city but halted any constru...

Image: Fruitboys | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hurricane of 1928 African-American Mass Burial Site: Ground That Speaks

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Skeeter451, Public domain. Today the burial site sits enclosed by fencing at the southwest corner of 25th Street and Tamarind Avenue, a small and quiet parcel in an urban neighborhood. The inner fenced area marks the approximate boundaries of the mass grave. It is not a grand memorial. There are no towerin...

Image: Skeeter451 | Public domain