Established in 1852, Elmwood Cemetery, whose gates rise in front of you, is one of the oldest and most historically significant cemeteries in the American South. Elmwood is a living museum of Memphis history, with seventy thousand graves spread across eighty acres of rolling terrain landscaped in the Victorian rural cemetery tradition — rolling paths, mature trees, and a landscape designed for contemplation rather than mere burial. The cemetery holds the remains of Memphis mayors, Confederate generals, and Union soldiers.
It holds the graves of yellow fever victims from the devastating epidemics of the 1870s, buried in mass graves that mark one of the darkest chapters in the city's history. It holds the grave of Annie Cook, a woman who ran a brothel but who during the 1878 epidemic opened it as a hospital and nursed the sick until she died of yellow fever herself. It holds the graves of Black Memphians who were buried in a segregated section called the African Section, their simple markers often bearing only a name.
Walk slowly here. Every stone tells a story, and together they tell the story of a city that has known extraordinary suffering and extraordinary grace.