Lawrence NAACP commissions 30 headstones to be placed to honor Black residents in Lawrence’s Potter’s Field
New gravestones are being added for 30 black Lawrence residents buried in unmarked graves in Potter’s Field at Oak Hill Cemetery.
The Lawrence NAACP is commissioning granite headstone markers to honor the 30 identified Black residents. Potter’s Field is the resting place of over 1,000 people from Lawrence, most of whom are buried in unmarked graves.
“So many times, markers are just for the wealthy and the powerful and the famous, and that’s not our goal,” Kerry Altenbernd, Chair of the Lawrence branch of the NAACP, Community Coordination Committee, said. “Our goal is to mix it up and say everyone has value.”
Of the 30 people being honored, three were lynching victims in Lawrence in 1882. The three Black men were accused of murdering a white man who had allegedly been sexually abusing one of their daughters.
“We can’t correct it, but we can try to give them justice in the long run, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Altenbernd said.
Margaret “Sis” Vinegar, the daughter of Peter Vinegar, one of the men lynched, narrowly avoided lynching by one vote from the mob. She was later convicted in court of murder at the age of 14. She died at 20 years old behind bars at the Leavenworth female penitentiary.
Her remains were lost, but she is being honored with a marker next to her father, Peter.
“Rather than have her be completely anonymous, lost to the ages, her marker is going to be next to her dad,” Altenbernd said.
Along with the markers, the NAACP will create digital biographies for all 30 people being honored. The biographies will be placed in the library history center, KU endowment and on the NAACP’s website.
Douglas County Monument Works is making and donating the granite markers at its own cost. Each marker has the name and birth and death dates of the person buried there.
Ursula Minor, president of the NAACP Lawrence Branch, said she hopes the project provides clarity about what life was like in the past.
“The community knowing these things happened is not trying to make Lawrence in a bad light, it’s just history that happened that we’re bringing to the forefront, that we can get together and talk about,” Minor said. “That these things did happen in Lawrence, and people should know that they did.”
Potter’s Field was a place for people without the financial means to pay for a plot in the regular cemetery. It was founded in 1865, and the last burial is believed to have been in 1917.
The official unveiling of the new headstones at Potter’s Field is scheduled for June 10, the anniversary of the 1882 lynching.
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