Bohemian National Cemetery
Near Chicago Lake Michigan, Illinois
In the summer of eighteen seventy-six, a woman named Marie Silhanek died in Chicago. When her family brought her to a Catholic cemetery, the priest refused to bury her because she had not made a final confession. That refusal set off a chain of events.
Czech immigrant societies, freethinkers, labor unions, and fraternal organizations came together at a mass meeting on January seventh, eighteen seventy-seven, and voted to build their own cemetery, open to any Czech regardless of religion. They purchased land, and the first burial took place on July first, eighteen seventy-seven. In the nearly one hundred fifty years since, more than one hundred twenty thousand people have been buried there, mostly Czech and Slovak immigrants and their descendants, across a hundred twenty-two acres on Chicago's northwest side.
It remains one of the largest and best-preserved ethnic cemeteries in the United States.
