Lincoln Cemetery, A Landmark of Black History
Near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Lincoln Cemetery has stood here since eighteen seventy-seven, established by Wesley Union A.M.E. Zion Church as a burial ground for central Pennsylvania's African American community at a time when Black Pennsylvanians were largely excluded from white cemeteries.
Among those interred here are T. Morris Chester, a Black war correspondent for the Philadelphia Press during the Civil War, and William Howard Day, a prominent abolitionist and educator. Catherine McClintock, a civil rights activist, is also buried here. So are at least twenty veterans of the Civil War, men who fought for a nation still deciding whether to recognize their humanity. The cemetery endures as a documentary record of a community that built its own institutions, honored its own dead, and left a lasting mark on Pennsylvania history.
