Marker commemorates black neighborhood
On May 19, a marker was unveiled commemorating the Silver Hill Cemetery. The neighborhood was established in the 1880s by African Americans.
A marker commemorating one of the city’s first African-American neighborhoods was unveiled last weekend during a special ceremony held at United Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church.
The Silver Hill neighborhood was established in the 1880s by African-Americans who worked in Winston’s tobacco factories. Located on the outskirts of the Buena Vista neighborhood, Silver Hill included its own church and cemetery.
Although The Negro Antioch Baptist Church burned down in the early 1940s, the remnants of the cemetery stood for years until headstones were removed for preservation.
Except for the marker next to the vacant field at the intersection of Wiley Avenue and Holiday Street, today the site of the cemetery bares no traces of the history it holds. It is believed that head stones dating back as far as the Civil War could be buried under the grassy surface.
Silver Hill Cemetery is now owned and maintained by United Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church. The marker unveiled by Mayor Allen Joines and other elected officials on Saturday, May 19 reads:
Silver Hill, a small, L-shaped 1880s African-American neighborhood of modest houses built by tobacco workers and domestic servants, predated the white subdivision of Buena Vista that developed around it. The community housed approximately 12 families through 1952. None of the houses remain. The Negro Antioch Baptist Church, ca. 1892, stood on Holiday Street until destroyed by fire in 1942. Headstones were removed from the cemetery for protection. 558 interments have been identified from 1901 to 1951. United Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church has owned and maintained the cemetery since 1965.
