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A drawing of the exhumation of President Monroe's coffin.

Which States Have the Most Dead Presidents?

The answer reveals grave robbing problems for America’s deceased leaders.
by Frank Jacobs via Atlas Obscura on October 20, 2023
Woman playing piano for African American soldiers.

Black Burials and Civil War Forgetting in Olustee, Florida

Finding the forgotten and racialized landscape of Civil War memory.
by Barbara A. Gannon via Black Perspectives on April 25, 2023

How a Tourist Attraction Displaying the Open Graves of Native Americans Became a State-Run Museum

Although the exhibit closed in 1992, the Dickson Mounds Museum is still grappling with its legacy.
by Logan Jaffe via ProPublica on February 1, 2023
Outdoor funeral service area

Piecing Together the Green Burial Movement

Green burials — the long-ago practice of laying loved ones to rest in biodegradable wooden caskets or shrouds, without embalming — are gaining in popularity.
by Olivia Milloway via The Bitter Southerner on February 8, 2022
shovels stuck in black scribbles representing dirt

Eating Dirt, Searching Archives

There are many black afterlives that are yet to be unearthed.
by Endia Hayes via Southern Cultures on July 16, 2021
A next-of-kin response card asking for the return of the remains of Pvt. James Argiroplos, who was killed near Hébuterne in France during World War I.

After WWI, U.S. Families Were Asked if They Wanted Their Dead Brought Home. Forty Thousand Said Yes.

In May 1921, President Harding paid tribute to a ship carrying 5,000 fallen Americans returned for burial.
by Michael E. Ruane via Washington Post on May 30, 2021
Author Kim Clarke’s grandfather, Army Air Corps Corporal Delbert W. Trueman, grandmother Virginia, and mother Judy in 1944.

Gruesome but Honorable Work

Grieving family members were instrumental in the creation of a federal program to rebury and repatriate the remains of fallen soldiers after World War II.
by Kim Clarke via Perspectives on History on May 24, 2021
Jefferson Wiggins.

History Forgot About These Black Soldiers of WWII. Now, a Group Is Remembering Their Work.

Mieke Kierkels and Chris Dickon have been collaborating on several projects to remember the sacrifices of African American soldiers during World War II.
by Denise M. Watson via The Virginian Pilot on April 29, 2021
A cemetery.

New Orleans: Vanishing Graves

Holt Cemetery has been filled to capacity many times over; each gravesite has been used for dozens of burials.
by Charlie Lee via The American Scholar on December 7, 2020
abstract picture of buildings

City, Island

What does the way we mourn, remember, and care for our dead say about us?
by Alexandra Marvar via The Believer on October 1, 2020

The Improbable Journey of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes

After two decades in a filing cabinet and three next to a parking lot in Baltimore, the author returns to New York.
by Laurie Gwen Shapiro via The New Yorker on September 4, 2020
An artist's rendition of a ghost.

The Indebted Dead

Tracing the history of the Grateful Dead folktale and the evolving obligations of being alive.
by Colin Dickey via Lapham’s Quarterly on June 29, 2020
Open field by a highway.

The Departed and Dismissed of Richmond

Richmond has a long-forgotten graveyard that is the resting place for hundreds of slaves. Will a new railway be built over it?
by Samantha Willis via Scalawag on August 5, 2019
African American prison laborers.

A School District Wants to Relocate the Bodies of 95 Black Forced-Labor Prisoners

A school district owns the property where the bodies of 95 black convict-lease prisoners from Jim Crow era were buried.
by Meagan Flynn via Washington Post on October 25, 2018
Hand-carved headstone.

The Hidden History of African-American Burial Sites in the Antebellum South

Enslaved people used codes to mark graves on plantation grounds.
by Evan Nicole Brown via Atlas Obscura on October 25, 2018

Reading the Soil

On the job with a pair of men who dig up bodies for a living.
by Christopher Cox via Oxford American on March 13, 2018

What Do We Do With Our Dead?

Our mortuary conventions reveal a lot about our relation to the past.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on October 16, 2017

Public Health and the Dead at Johnstown

How do we humanely bury the dead after a disaster?
by Vicki Daniel via Nursing Clio on December 2, 2015
Illustration of grave robbing

Body Snatchers of Old New York

In the 1780s, medical schools used cadavers stolen from the cemeteries of slaves.
by Bess Lovejoy via Lapham’s Quarterly on October 13, 2013
Small headstones for pets in Hyde Park, London, dating back to the 1880s.

Why the World’s First Pet Cemetery Was Revolutionary

A new book charts the history of pet cemeteries and honors the universal experience of grieving an animal companion.
by Rachel Nuwer via Smithsonian on September 24, 2024
Funeral home.

Purple Coffins: Death Care and Life Extension in 20th Century American South

How deathly rituals affect our perception of personal dignity.
by Kristine M. McCusker via Circulating Now on September 5, 2024
Grave marker for "Special Case - Baby 1."

The Search for Special Case–Baby 1

Who was buried in the lonely grave in New York’s potter’s field? The year-long search led to a lost world in the history of AIDS.
by Lizzy Ratner via The Nation on March 12, 2024
Sheboygan Indian Mound Park.

Sheboygan's Indian Mound Park was Saved by a Garden Club and Newspaper Campaign

Earthen Indigenous burial mounds were created in the shape of birds, reptiles and mammals.
by Gary C. Klein via Sheboygan Press on October 12, 2023
Civilian gravestone in Arlington National Cemetery

From ‘Contraband’ to ‘Citizen’: Visiting Arlington’s Section 27

More than 3,800 formerly enslaved people are buried in the military cemetery.
by John Kelly via Washington Post on October 7, 2023

The Dark Secrets Buried at Red Cloud Boarding School

How much truth and healing can forensic tech really bring? On the sites of Native American tragedies, Marsha Small has made it her life’s mission to find out.
by Rowan Moore Gerty via Wired on July 13, 2023
Donellia Chives, a trustee of Penn Center.

White Gold from Black Hands: The Gullah Geechee Fight for a Legacy after Slavery

Descendants of the west Africans who picked the cotton that made Manchester rich are struggling to keep their distinct culture alive.
by DeNeen L. Brown via The Guardian on March 30, 2023
The "Sacred 20" nurses at the Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C., ca. 1908.

Remembering the Sacred 20 at Arlington National Cemetery

The first women to serve in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps helped improve military medicine and expand women’s opportunities to officially serve in the armed forces.
by Allison S. Finkelstein via Arlington National Cemetery on March 23, 2023
For most of her 74 years, Ruth Ann Hills took a certain innocent pride in her family’s story and its place in Staten Island history. Generations of her family had resided in Mariners Harbor on the island’s North Shore. She and her brother David Thomas live in the house their grandfather built on Van Pelt Avenue. They had found Black ancestors on Staten Island as far back as the 1700s, and incredibly they had all eluded slavery. Or so Hills thought. All of that changed one day in 2021, when Hills received a visit from a filmmaker. Heather Quinlan was working on a documentary about a nearby graveyard. Over the course of her genealogical research, Quinlan had discovered that one of the people buried there was Hills’ great-great-great-grandfather. Neither Hills nor Thomas had ever heard of the man, Benjamin Prine, but his death in 1900 at the age of 106 had been covered by the New York Times and the wire services. Prine, a U.S. veteran of the War of 1812, had been the last enslaved person born on Staten Island, Quinlan told them. A photograph of a man, seated, holding a cane. The photograph has a long caption beneath, that is headlined "THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME." Hills' and Thomas' great-great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Prine. Staten Island Historical Society. Prine had once been enslaved by Peter Van Pelt, a highly influential Dutch Reformed Church minister – meaning that the street on which the siblings now live took its name from the same white family that enslaved their ancestor. “I thought I was a big history buff. ‘Oh, I know about history,’” Hills said. “I guess I was naive.” A crosswalk scene underneath two large street signs that both read "Van Pelt Av." The intersection of Van Pelt Avenue and Forest Avenue on Staten Island. Reece T. Williams/Gothamist

How the Remains of Formerly Enslaved People Came to Rest Beneath a Staten Island Strip Mall

Benjamin Prine's descendants didn’t know about their family ties – or their connection to his enslaver.
by Arun Venugopal via Gothamist on February 9, 2023
Men standing around an archaeological site.

America’s Biggest Museums Fail to Return Native American Human Remains

The remains of more than 100,000 Native Americans are held by prestigious U.S. institutions, despite a 1990 law meant to return them to tribal nations.
by Logan Jaffe, Mary Hudetz, Ash Ngu, Graham Lee Brewer via ProPublica on January 11, 2023
The statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill was taken down Dec. 12. Hill’s remains beneath it are set to be relocated.

Richmond Takes Down Its Last Major City-Owned Confederate Memorial

Richmond's last major Confederate memorial on city property, a statue of Gen. A.P. Hill, was taken down Monday morning.
by Gregory S. Schneider via Washington Post on December 12, 2022
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