[1] Washington Park Cemetery was founded in 1920 by businessmen Andrew Henry Watson and Joseph John Hauer as a for-profit, perpetual-care burial site for African Americans, eventually becoming the largest African-American cemetery in the St. Louis region at the time.

As a result, they were the subject of criticism for, “disrupting bucolic country land with the presence of black St. Louisans.”[2] Beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, the cemetery was impacted by three construction projects.

Across these three projects, an estimated 11,974 to 13,600 bodies were disinterred and relocated, resulting in some families losing track of their ancestral graves.

[8] Restoration efforts at the cemetery by various volunteer groups are ongoing, in hopes of turning this into a heritage site.

[9] Another news report, in March 2022, stated that the cemetery is in a trust held by St. Louis County because of unpaid taxes.