Pleasant Shade Cemetery (Hampton, Va.) records, compiled 2012-2018

Access and use

Location of collection:
Library of Virginia
The Library of Virginia
800 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219
Contact for questions and access:
POC: Archives Reference Services
Phone: (804) 692-3888

Summary

Extent:
1.4 cubic feet (4 boxes)
Creator:
John Mitchell, Mary Kayaselcuk, and Selma Stewart
Language:
English

Background

Scope and content:

Cemetery records for Pleasant Shade Cemetery, the oldest African American public cemetery on the Virginia Peninsula. Information compiled 2012-2018 by John Mitchell, Mary Kayaselcuk, and Selma Stewart. Provides name and burial information for identified burials in the 14 sections of the cemetery listed by section and by alphabetical order. Includes information on veterans, notable persons, and persons born in the 1800s.

Biographical / historical:

Pleasant Shade Cemetery, comprising over 20 acres, is the oldest and largest public African American cemetery located on the lower Virginia Peninsula. It is a combination of three earlier burial grounds, Mount Zion (1888), Pleasant Shade (1908) and Holly Grove (1918), and contains an estimated 15,000 burials, of which only a portion have been identified. After its owners abandoned the cemetery, Darnell Lang (1954-2024) and Artistine Mears-Lang founded the East End Neighborhood Association to organize volunteer efforts to save and maintain the cemetery. The cemetery has been divided into 14 sections to make identification of burial sites easier. The cemetery is the resting place for many prominent African American leaders of Hampton and Newport News, Virginia, including James A. Fields (1844-1903), member of the Virginia House of Delegates; attorney and social justice pioneer Joseph Thomas Newsome (1869-1942); evangelist Lightfoot Soloman Michaux (1885-1968); and Jessie Menfield Rattley (1929-2001), the first woman and African American to serve on the Newport News City Council and as mayor of Newport News.

Acquisition information:
Gift of Artistine Mears-Lang, Hampton, Virginia, and Mary Kayaselcuk and Selma Stewart, Newport News, Virginia.
Arrangement:

This collection is arranged

  • Series I: Sections
  • Series II: Veterans
  • Series III: 1800s
  • Series IV: Notables
  • Series V: Marker surveys
  • Series VI: Alphabetical
  • Series VII: Search
  • Series VIII: General and miscellaneous