Tamarind Avenue: 674 Black victims in a pauper's field, white victims in Woodlawn (West Palm Beach, 1928 to 2002)

SUMMARYTamarind Avenue: 674 Black victims in a pauper's field, white victims in Woodlawn (West Palm Beach, 1928 to 2002) [Connections: Miami & Lake Okeechobee, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDState marker F-450 (City of West Palm Beach and Florida Department of State, 2001): about 1,600 victims buried in a mass grave at Port Mayaca (Martin County); in West Palm Beach 69 white victims were buried at Woodlawn Cemetery and about 674 Black victims in the city's pauper's burial field at Tamarind Avenue and 25th Street; about 2,000 people attended a September 30, 1928 ceremony where Mary McLeod Bethune read the mayor's proclamation; the site "was not recognized again until 1991, when a Yoruba ceremony was held there." The Equal Justice Initiative adds that officials forced Black survivors to recover bodies, fed only those who worked, that "people who refused were shot," and that the land was later sold as a garbage dump, then slaughterhouse, then sewage plant; the city bought it in 2000. NRHP September 12, 2002

PATTERNEven in death the county split the dead into two races, with coffins for one

LENS (WW9)Two graveyards for one flood

OPENEJI's claim about shootings needs its primary source (survivor testimony?); the Port Mayaca 1,600 are not identified by race on the marker

SOURCEHurricane of 1928 Mass Burial Site marker (HMdb); EJI Calendar, Sept. 16, 1928; Hurricane of 1928 African-American Mass Burial Site (Wikipedia).