In the 1920s, a group of investors led by Clarence J. Sanger had a new vision for a cemetery and proposed their idea to Detroit architect Alvin Harley.

[1] Harley's plan created a long central boulevard flanked by rectangular sections extending from the main gate.

[2] The remains of 56 ANREF soldiers exhumed from Russia were on this occasion re-buried in plots surrounding the Polar Bear Monument by sculptor Leon Hermant.

[3][4] On August 10, 1960, an honorably discharged 66-year-old World War I veteran, George Vincent Nash, was removed from resting alongside his Caucasian wife at the White Chapel Cemetery.

[10] However, the Michigan state legislatures in both 1961 and 1962, failed to pass bills that would have prohibited cemeteries to discriminate who could be interred in them on the basis of race.