South-View Cemetery

The cemetery was founded by nine African American businessmen in 1886 to provide a place where their family members could be buried with dignity in the midst of backlash to Reconstruction.[3]

The cemetery has both perpetual care and non-perpetual care areas. All new lots are sold with perpetual care, but many historic family plots were not.[4] As a result, some portions of the cemetery have "suffered from neglect".[5] A non-profit foundation was created in 2004 to raise money, conduct preservation projects and provide care for historic parts of the cemetery.[4]

A cell phone tour of the cemetery was created in a collaborative effort with Oakland Cemetery to provide biographical details about African Americans interred at the two cemeteries. Visitors can obtain a site map at the visitors center, and each of the 14 stops on the tour is marked with a granite marker. The visitor can call a phone number and dial each stop number as they arrive at it, to hear information.[4]

The cemetery celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2011, and at that time Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed gave it the city's Phoenix Award for its contributions to the city.[4] For many years South-View was paid by the city of Atlanta to provide spaces for African-Americans buried at city expense.[6]

Two printed guidebooks to the cemetery have been published.[7][8]

Twenty-two people are buried in the cemetery that have or have had schools in the Atlanta Public Schools named for them.[9] All the deceased pastors of Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church are buried here as of 2016.[9]

Veterans who served in every war since World War I are buried in the cemetery, including two members of the Tuskegee Airmen. An annual ceremony as part of Wreaths Across America has been held in December starting in 2010.[10]

Notable people buried here include:

• Hank Aaron,[11] baseball player
• Moses Amos,[6] Georgia's first licensed African-American pharmacist, grandfather of artist Emma Amos
• Ludie Clay Andrews,[12] the first African-American granted a nursing license by Georgia
• Samuel Howard Archer,[13] 5th president of Morehouse College, namesake of several Atlanta Public Schools
• William Barrett, Yusuf Bell, Milton Harvey, Aaron Jackson, Patrick Rogers, Curtis Walker, and Aaron Wyche,[14][15] who were among the victims of the Atlanta murders of 1979–1981
• Walt Bellamy,[1][16] Olympic gold medal and professional basketball player
• Fred C. Bennette,[17] civil rights leader, aide to Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Jesse B. Blayton,[18] radio entrepreneur and civil rights activist

• Horace A. Bohannon,[10] a Tuskegee Airman who co-founded the Atlanta Chapter Tuskegee Airmen in 1976
• Horace Mann Bond,[19] historian, educator, father of Julian Bond
• Julian Bond,[1][19] civil rights leader, helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
• William Holmes Borders,[17][20] civil rights activist, pastor of Wheat Street Baptist Church
• Ariel Serena Hedges Bowen,[21] writer, temperance activist
• John W. E. Bowen Sr.,[21] clergyman, educator
• Brailsford R. Brazeal,[22] professor of economics at Morehouse College, civil rights leader
• Larry Brown, graduate of Archer High School and Marshall University football player killed in the Southern Airways Flight 932 crash[23]
• Raymond Holmes Carter,[24] medical doctor who served in World War I, namesake of Atlanta Medical Association's Nash-Carter Award
• Alice Dugged Cary,[6][25] librarian of the Auburn Avenue library
• Carrie Cunningham,[14][4] owner of the Royal Peacock Club and Royal Hotel
• Frank Cunningham,[26] president of Morris Brown College
• John Wesley Dobbs,[1][17][2][20][4] civic leader, unofficial "mayor" of Auburn Avenue
• Mattiwilda Dobbs,[1][17] opera singer
• Eleanor Guest,[27] original member of Gladys Knight & the Pips
• William Guest,[1] member of Gladys Knight & the Pips
• Grace Towns Hamilton,[17] first African-American woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly
• John and Billie Harden,[28] owners of the Atlanta Black Crackers baseball team
• Charles Lincoln Harper,[9] first principal of Booker T. Washington High School, namesake of several other schools since
• Geneva Haugabrooks,[28] one of a few women business owners in the Sweet Auburn Historic District
• Freddye Scarborough Henderson,[29] created the first black-owned travel agency in the Southeast
• Adrienne McNeil Herndon,[30] educator, actress, wife of Alonzo Herndon
• Alonzo Herndon,[20][4] one of the first Black millionaires
• John Hicks,[31] jazz pianist
• Jesse Hill,[17] civil rights activist
• Graham W. Jackson Sr.,[32] organist and pianist
• Virginia Lacy Jones,[33] librarian at Atlanta University
• Alberta Williams King,[34] Martin Luther King Jr.'s mother
• Alfred Daniel Williams King,[35] civil rights leader, brother of Martin Luther King Jr.
• Martin Luther King, Sr.,[20][34][4] Martin Luther King Jr.'s father
• John Lewis,[3] civil rights leader
• Red McAllister,[36] band leader and saxophonist
• Homer Erwin Nash,[37][38] doctor who served in World War I, namesake of Nash-Carter Award, father of Helen Elizabeth Nash
• Dinah Watts Pace,[39] educator
• John Andrew Parker,[27] first pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church
• Duke Pearson,[27] jazz pianist and composer
• Donald Reeves,[36] professional baseball player
• Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson,[36] civil rights activist
• Herman J. Russell,[40] entrepreneur, civic leader, philanthropist
• Frank Smith[41][14][6] and George Wilder,[14][6] victims of the Atlanta Massacre of 1906
• Nathaniel Patrick Tillman,[42] educator and administrator at Morehouse College and Atlanta University
• George Alexander Towns,[43] educator at Atlanta University, civil rights activist, father of Grace Towns Hamilton
• Henry McNeal Turner,[1][6] minister and politician, one of the Original 33
• Bazoline Estelle Usher,[44] long-time Atlanta Public Schools educator

• Walter Drake Westmoreland,[45][10] a Tuskegee Airman who received the Air Medal and Purple Heart
• Albery Allson Whitman,[2] minister, poet, orator known as "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race". Also father to the Whitman Sisters.
• Whitman Sisters Alberta, Essie and Mabel,[2] famous Black Vaudeville performers
• Samuel Woodrow Williams,[46] minister, professor and civil rights activist
• Chuck Willis,[47] singer, songwriter
• Billy Wright,[47] blues singer
• Asa G. Yancey Sr.,[17] medical doctor and educator
• Jean Childs Young,[20] educator, wife of Andrew Young

• Martin Luther King Jr.[17] was moved to a tomb at the eventual site of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change on January 13, 1970.[48]
• Henry Ossian Flipper[17] was reburied in his hometown of Thomasville, Georgia on February 11, 1978.[49]
• Benjamin Mays[17] and his wife Sadie Gray Mays were moved to the Morehouse College campus on May 21, 1995.[50]

• Bayne, John S. (2016). Atlanta's South-View Cemetery. Atlanta: Vanity Press. ISBN 978-1312735293. OCLC 962488589.
• Henderson, D.L. (2018). South-View: An African American City of the Dead. Dunwoody, Georgia: Carrelspin Press. ISBN 978-0998577203. OCLC 1048552699.
• Hite, Michelle S. (2016). "Finding the Back Entrance Unsuitable: Liberation, Pedagogy, and South-View Cemetery". Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy. 26 (2): 272–282. doi:10.5325/trajincschped.26.2.0272. JSTOR 10.5325/trajincschped.26.2.0272.
• Fisher, W. D.; Buckley, Joann H. (2016). African American Doctors of World War I: The Lives of 104 Volunteers. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. pp. 60–63, 163–165. ISBN 9781476663159. OCLC 1066103319 – via Google Books.
• Spencer, Thomas E. (1998). Where They're Buried: A Directory Containing More Than Twenty Thousand Names of Notable Persons Buried in American Cemeteries, with Listings of Many Prominent People Who Were Cremated. Baltimore: Clearfield Co. ISBN 9780806348230. OCLC 1036925754. Retrieved June 9, 2020 – via Google Books.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to South-View Cemetery.

• Official web site
• Historical marker
• South-View Cemetery at Find a Grave