‘The bodies have expired, the dreams haven’t;’ This S.I. cemetery could earn NYC landmark status (2024)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Black New Yorkers nearly a century ago sought a dignified location for their loved ones’ final resting place. Today, a group of Staten Islanders hopes to keep that dream alive at an Oakwood cemetery.

Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, at the corner of Amboy Road and Montreal Avenue, took its first step toward New York City landmark status March 19 when the Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC) voted to calendar its consideration at a future meeting.

During a tour of the grounds last week, Frederick Douglass Memorial Park Board President Brandon Stradford and members Debbie-Ann Paige and Lisa Wallace said the landmark designation would help them better maintain the cemetery.

“For me, it’s just making it be what we once were,” Stradford said “There was a lot of grandeur here, especially in those years when we first opened.”

Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks (D-North Shore) chairs the City Council’s Landmarks Committee, and said the landmarking of Frederick Douglass Memorial Park would be the first in a series of honors focused on African American burial grounds around the five boroughs.

“As Landmarks chair, I applaud the commission to calendar Fredrick Douglas Memorial park, which will be the first of a series of African American burial grounds and cemeteries that will be landmarked to recognize, celebrate and acknowledge our history citywide,” she said. For too long there has been no acknowledgement of the lengthy history and contributions African Americans have in New York City and especially on Staten Island.”

THE HISTORY

Rodney Dade, a Harlem funeral director, founded the cemetery in 1933 after seeing the bigotry Black people faced in the five boroughs when burying their loved ones.

Cemeteries around the city often segregated Black dead people to undesirable areas on their grounds, and forced their families through various indignities, said Mary Ann-Hurley, who presented Frederick Douglass Memorial Park’s landmark case to LPC.

Founders named the park for Frederick Douglass, the 19th century abolitionist and statesman born into slavery, and began burying people in 1935. Douglass is buried in Rochester.

As one of the few cemeteries entirely open to Black people, Frederick Douglass Memorial Park accepted a host of prominent figures, including blues singer Mamie Smith, Negro League baseball players Elias “Country Brown” Bryant and King Solomon “Sol” White.

Stradford, Paige and Wallace all said they have family members buried at Frederick Douglass Memorial Park and that their stewardship of the cemetery is, in part, about preserving their memories along with those of countless families.

“The bodies are dead. The bodies have expired; the dreams haven’t,” Stradford said. “We don’t hear them speak, but their dreams still live in their descendants.”

A MODERN CEMETERY

While rich in historic significance, Frederick Douglass Memorial Park still functions as a modern, 14.88-acre cemetery, accommodating burials a few times each week for people of all races and denominations. It has also been used for the Richmond County Public Administrator’s Burial Program, which provides dignified burials to descendants who have no families to handle them.

Signs of care, like flowers and other mementos, can be seen at individual graves around the park, but decades of neglect preceding the current board have left the site in need of work.

In 2008, the Advance/SILive.com reported that Frederick Douglass Memorial Park was in danger of becoming an abandoned cemetery after years of mismanagement.

The state Division of Cemeteries, which regulates nonsectarian cemeteries like Frederick Douglass Memorial Park, first raised alarm bells about management there in 1999.

In 2005, the state courts removed a former director of the cemetery, issued a $667,593 judgment against her, and put the cemetery into a receivership.

That receivership wasn’t without controversy after the third individual to take on the role tore down historic gates at the park entrance, leading to a lawsuit that was eventually dismissed.

Today, the stewards of Frederick Douglass Memorial Park want to move on from the past few decades, and hope securing a landmark status can help them do so.

Stradford, Paige and Wallace laid out a series of projects they hope to pursue, including park benches for visitors, improved paving around the park and a possible expansion into untapped land that is part of the park.

“If you look at the early picture . . . it really is designed as a park,’' Paige said. “That’s why they called it Memorial Park, because Black people tend to celebrate (the dead). It was a place that folks could come and be with their people. ... To then go back to the original thoughts of putting in the benches so that you can sit and contemplate and actually be a park...I think is a great idea.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article spelled the name as “Brandon Stratford.” It is “Stradford.”