Lincoln Memorial Park

Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery
	Entrance to the L.M.P. Cemetery
Details
Established	1924
Location	3001 NW 46th St, Miami, FL 33142
Country	USA
Style	Above ground vaults
Owned by	Jessica Williams (current)
Size	20 acres
No. of graves	538 plots

Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery is a historic African-American cemetery in the Brownsville neighborhood of Miami, Florida.

History[]

Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery was first used as a graveyard in 1924 on land owned by a F.B. Miller (a white realtor). In 1929 the burial ground was purchased by Kelsey Pharr, who was a black funeral director. Mr. Pharr was a native of South Carolina, who had studied embalming in Boston and had moved to Miami in the early 1900s. He was a philanthropist and served as consul to Liberia.^[1] After his death in 1964, the cemetery passed on to his goddaughter Elyn Johson, and then to Jessica Williams, the latter's niece.^[2] In 2017, Williams partnered with the Coral Gables Museum in an ongoing restorative effort.^[3]

The layout of the cemetery is of the above the ground burial style which is very popular in locations at or below sea level and are prone to flooding, just like a few blocks away and the Charlotte Jane Memorial Park Cemetery in Coconut Grove.^[4]^[5]

Some of Miami's most noted African-Americans^[6] are buried in Lincoln Memorial Park:

Kelsey Phar, first owner of the cemetery; (died 1964)
H.E.S. Reeves, founder of the Miami Times, the county’s oldest Black-owned newspaper; (died 1970)
Gwen Cherry, the first African-American woman to serve as a state legislator in Florida; (died 1979)^[7]
Dana A. Dorsey, Miami’s first Black millionaire; (died 1940)
Rev. John Culmer, rector of the Historical St. Agnes Episcopal Church in Overtown; (died 1963)