SEWANEE – Community members are invited to help honor people buried in 148 lost graves during a memorial ceremony Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026, at the University of the South.
The Rememberings ceremony begins at 2:30 p.m. in the University Cemetery. Participants will help place specially designed bronze markers in the historic Black graveyard, commemorating people from Sewanee’s St. Mark’s community whose burial places had disappeared from view over generations.
The Roberson Project says ground-penetrating radar located the graves, which had been lost over the past century and a half. The identities of the people buried there remain unknown. The memorial effort is intended to preserve recognition of their lives and dignity even as those names remain missing from the historical record.
Each hand-forged bronze marker is topped with a dogwood blossom, a design inspired by the dogwood trees growing in the cemetery. The project calls for a marker at each grave site.
Sunday’s program also includes a reading of a newly commissioned poem by Tiana Clark, a Sewanee School of Letters faculty member and National Book Award for Poetry finalist.
The work is part of the Roberson Project’s broader effort to document the history of the university, the town and the people who helped build both. Launched in July 2017, the initiative brings together students, faculty, staff, alumni and local residents to examine slavery and its legacies and recognize African American contributions to Sewanee.
Its Save Sewanee Black History initiative addresses more than 160 years of African American life and work in the university community.
Sources: University of the South event calendar; The Roberson Project; Memorial SPIKE Project background.
Symbolic remembrance illustration. Illustration by 931Go. No third-party photograph used. Credit: 931Go.
