The Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery at 1001 S. Washington St. in Alexandria, Virginia was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 15, 2012.

[1] It was established in February 1864 by the Union military commander of the Alexandria District for use as a cemetery for the burial of African Americans who had escaped slavery, known as contrabands and freedmen.

Safely behind Union lines, the cities of Alexandria and Washington offered not only comparative freedom and protection from their former enslavers, but employment for refugees.

African American men and women took positions with the U.S. Army as construction workers, nurses and hospital stewards, longshoremen, painters, wood cutters, teamsters, laundresses, cooks, gravediggers, personal servants, and ultimately as soldiers and sailors.

In February 1864, after hundreds had died, the commander of the Alexandria military district, General John P. Slough, confiscated a parcel of undeveloped land at the corner of South Washington and Church streets from a pro-Confederate owner to be used as a cemetery specifically for burial of African Americans.

[5] In 1868, after Congress ended most functions of the Freedmen's Bureau, the federal government stopped managing the cemetery and returned the property to its original owners.

A Washington Post newspaper article in 1892 stated the wooden grave markers had decayed and people had unofficially continued using the site for burials.

The "Book of Records" maintained first by the Office of the Superintendent of Contrabands, and later by the Freedmen's Bureau, documents the names of 1,711 people buried at the cemetery between 1864 and 1869.

Archeological surveys in relation to construction of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge included use of ground penetrating radar (GPR) to determine the presence of graves.

The cemetery memorial opened in September 2014 and includes a sculpture, The Path of Thorns and Roses by Mario Chiodo, at the center of the park.

It is an astonishing fact, which ought to be placed upon record ... [ellipsis in the original] that out of the two thousand people collected at Alexandria, there are four hundred children sent daily to school.