African Cemetery No. 2
Near Lexington, Kentucky
On East Seventh Street in Lexington lies African Cemetery No. Two, the earliest cemetery in the city to be organized, owned, and operated entirely by Black residents. It traces its roots to the Union Benevolent Society No. Two, founded in eighteen fifty-two by Lewis Page, Sam Breckinridge, and other Lexington men with a simple charter: care for the sick, bury the dead, and perform deeds of charity.
In November of eighteen sixty-nine, the Society purchased four acres here. In eighteen seventy-five they bought four more. By eighteen eighty-nine they were absorbing three hundred reinterred bodies from a nearby Presbyterian cemetery sold to developers. Today the eight-acre ground holds fewer than six hundred marked graves among more than five thousand burials, including about one hundred twelve United States Colored Troops. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in two thousand four.
