Dallas's largest Freedman-era burial ground, erased by mid-20th-century highway construction and rediscovered in 1990 with more than 1,200 unmarked graves beneath a major expressway corridor.
N Central Expy & Calvary Dr, Dallas, TX 75204
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to visit; the memorial park and monument are publicly accessible.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved memorial park with accessible pathways and monument plaza.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1869 · One of the largest confirmed Freedman cemeteries in the U.S. · Dallas Landmark · Texas State Historic Site · Site of deliberate erasure by North Central Expressway construction · 1990 archaeological rediscovery with 2,000+ burials documented
Freedman's Cemetery was founded in 1869, four years after the end of the Civil War, to serve the growing community of formerly enslaved Black residents settling in and around Dallas. The cemetery operated as the primary burial ground for the Freedman's Town neighborhood through the early 1920s. Burial records from this period are incomplete, and many graves were never formally marked, reflecting both the poverty of the community and the social conditions of the post-Reconstruction South.
By the mid-twentieth century, city planning had turned against the neighborhood. Between 1937 and the late 1940s, the construction of North Central Expressway — U.S. Highway 75 — was routed through the cemetery grounds. Gravestones were removed or buried. Utility lines, parking facilities, and the expressway itself were laid over the burial site. The Dallas Free Press's investigative series on the erasure of Freedman's Town documents this as a deliberate pattern affecting several Black community institutions, not an oversight.
In 1990, TxDOT began a road-widening project in the corridor. Construction workers encountered human remains almost immediately. Archaeological excavation followed, recovering skeletal remains and documenting the cemetery's extent. The final count exceeded 800 marked burials and more than 1,200 unmarked graves — making it one of the largest Freedman cemeteries confirmed in the United States.
The site was designated a Dallas Landmark and is listed on the Texas State Historical Commission registry. In 1999, the Freedman's Cemetery Memorial opened on the preserved portion of the grounds. The centerpiece is a large bronze monument by artist David Newton depicting freed Black Dallasites across three generations. Interpretive panels on the site document the community's history, the erasure, and the rediscovery.
The cemetery remains an active subject of historical scholarship and community advocacy. Most of the excavated remains were reinterred on-site.
Sources
Freedman's Cemetery is not included here as a paranormal site. There are no documented ghost-tour narratives attached to it, and framing this memorial in supernatural terms would be inappropriate given the history it represents — a community of freed Black Dallasites whose burial ground was deliberately erased by mid-century infrastructure planning and whose dead went unmarked for nearly fifty years.
The dark-tourism value of the site is historical and moral rather than paranormal. The 1990 rediscovery — when TxDOT construction workers began pulling skeletal remains from what highway planners had designated a roadway corridor — is the defining event. That excavation confirmed more than 2,000 burials beneath a stretch of North Central Expressway, a fact that compelled the city to halt construction, fund an archaeological recovery operation, and eventually build a memorial.
The site now functions as a public monument and teaching location. Its classification in the Hauntbound corpus reflects its status as a cemetery with documented trauma in its history, not as a site of reported paranormal activity. Visitors come to read the interpretive panels, see the Newton monument, and understand what was lost and why.
A self-guided visit to the Freedman's Cemetery Memorial, which includes the 1999 bronze monument by David Newton honoring the freed Black Dallasites buried here between 1869 and the 1920s. The park includes interpretive panels documenting the cemetery's founding, its erasure by North Central Expressway construction in the mid-1940s, and its 1990 rediscovery during TxDOT roadwork.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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Aerial survey · USDA NAIPArlington, TX
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